;CISM  IN  SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY 
I       ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BY  ELBERT  N.  S.  THOMPSON 


CHAPEL  HILL   1921 


IK;  ;     i?r 


MYSTICISM  IN  SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY 
ENGLISH  LITEKATURE 


BY  ELBERT  N.  S.  THOMPSON 


CHAPEL  HILL   1921 


MYSTICISM  IN  SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY  ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 

BY  ELBERT  N.  S.  THOMPSON 

Milton's  undisguised  scorn  of  the  "libidinous  and  ignorant 
poetasters"  of  his  generation  may  seem  at  first  only  another  in- 
stance of  his  unbending  attitude  toward  the  lighter  pleasures  of  the 
world.1  Other  poets,  however,  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  condemn  the  exclusive  absorption  of  sonneteers  and  pas- 
toralists  in  themes  of  love,  and  offer  as  an  offset  their  earnest  pleas 
for  sacred  verse.  For  example,  Robert  Southwell,  in  the  preface  of 
Saint  Peter's  Complaint  written  eight  years  before  the  death  of 
Elizabeth,  accused  poets  of  "  abusing  their  talent,  and  making  the 
follies  and  faynings  of  loue  the  customarie  subiect  of  their  base 
endeuours."  Apparently,  these  amorists  temporarily  crowded  all 
others  from  the  field;  for  Nicholas  Breton,  in  issuing  The  Mothers 
Blessing,  complained,  "that  matter  of  good  worth,  either  morall, 
or  diuine,  if  it  bee  handled  in  verse,  it  is  almost  as  ill  as  vertue ;  it 
will  not  sell  almost  for  any  thing."  Yet  only  a  few  years  later, 
George  Herbert  published  The  Church  Porch  with  greater  assur- 
ance, convinced  that 

A  verse  may  finde  him  who  a  sermon  flies, 
And  turn  delight  into  a  sacrifice. 

Nor  was  his  confidence  in  the  appeal  of  sacred  poetry  misplaced. 
Before  the  close  of  the  century  other  poets  had  voiced  the  senti- 
ment of  Herbert's  sonnet  beginning : 

My  God,  where  is  that  antient  heat  towards  thee 
Wherewith  whole  shoals  of  Martyrs  once  did  burn, 
Besides  their  other  flames?    Doth  Poetry 
Wear  Venus'  livery,  only  serve  her  turn? 
Why  are  not  Sonnets  made  of  thee,  and  laves 
Upon  thine  Altar  burnt?    Cannot  thy  love 
Heighten  a  spirit  to  sound  out  thy  praise 
As  well  as  any  ehe? 


1  Ch.  Gov.,  2,  p.  480. 

2 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  3 

The  popularity  of  sacred  poetry  throughout  the  seventeenth 
century  was  by  no  means  a  literary  fashion.  To  be  sure,  Edmund 
Spenser,  who  exerted  a  dominant  influence  on  the  writers  of  the 
century  succeeding,  had  lived  to  regret  the  "two  Hymnes  in  the 
praise  of  love  and  beauty "  composed  "  in  the  greener  times  of 
my  youth,"  and  had  offered  as  atonement  two  corresponding  hymns 
on  heavenly  love  and  beauty.  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  influence,  too, 
wherever  the  Apology  was  known,  operated  in  the  same  direction. 
Furthermore,  the  usage  of  French  poets  somewhat  later  encouraged 
Cowley  and  his  contemporaries  to  handle  Biblical  story.  Thus 
there  came  to  be  something  of  a  vogue  for  sacred  poetry.  But  its 
wide  dissemination  can  not  be  attributed  to  fashion  alone.  The 
truly  significant  work  of  Vaughan,  Traherne,  Crashaw,  Norris, 
Drummond,  and  many  others  came  in  response  to  the  growing 
seriousness  of  the  nation's  temperament.  Naturally,  during  the 
long  and  bitter  conflict  between  the  factions  of  the  church,  men's 
minds  were  chiefly  engrossed  in  religious  questions,  and  many  poets 
turned  from  erotic  songs  to  dedicate  their  talents  to  the  church. 

Much  of  this  sacred  writing  lies  altogether  outside  the  province 
of  mysticism,  unless  the  term  be  employed  so  vaguely  as  to  be  quite 
meaningless.  Much  more  of  it,  also,  can  not  be  classed  as  literature, 
but  must  be  left  to  theology,  controversy,  or  practical  ethics.  If 
the  significance  of  the  word,  mysticism,  however,  be  not  unwarrant- 
ably restricted,  a  considerable  body  of  the  finest  literature  of  the 
seventeenth  century  falls  within  its  field.  Bacon's  prose  essays  and 
Herrick's  charming  songs  would  be  the  most  notable  exceptions. 
In  the  fourteenth  century  mysticism  had  risen  to  its  highest  level  of 
power.  Mechthild,  Meister  Eckhart,  Tauler,  Suso,  Euysbrock, 
Dante,  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna,  Richard  Rolle  of  Hampole,  Walter 
Hilton,  and  Julian  of  Norwich  all  lived  in  that  period.  Their 
teaching  in  the  vernacular  determined  to  a  great  extent  the  thought 
of  later  generations.  Hence  in  the  seventeenth  century,  when 
English  minds  were  deeply  stirred  by  Christian  theology,  the  under- 
current of  mysticism  came  strongly  to  the  surface,  even  though  the 
English  temperament  has  never  been  apt  in  abstract  speculation, 
and  though  formal  mysticism  has  not  thriven  naturally  on  English 
soil. 

The  etymologist  might  use  the  word  mysticism,  which  is  derived 
from  a  root  signifying  close,  of  "  any  secret  language  or  ritual 


4          Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

which  is  understood  only  by  the  initiated  " ;  or  understand  by  the 
term  the  shutting  of  all  ordinary  channels  of  sensory  impressions, 
so  that  the  mystic  becomes  an  "enclosed,  self -withdrawn,  intro- 
verted man." 2  But  philosophers  have  commonly  applied  the  word 
to  a  faith  in  "the  internal  manifestation  of  the  Divine  to  the 
intuition  or  in  the  feeling  of  the  secluded  soul/5  Or,  according  to 
another  definition,  mysticism  is  "  in  its  essence,  a  concentration  of 
all  the  soul's  energies  upon  a  supernatural  Object,  conceived  of 
and  loved  as  a  living  personality."  3  This  coincides  with  Dean  Inge's 
idea  that  mysticism  has  its  origin  in  a  dim  consciousness  of  the 
beyond,  and  is  really  an  "attempt  to  realize  the  presence  of  the 
living  God  in  the  soul  and  in  nature."  He  specifies  as  the  founda- 
tion stones  of  such  faith  these  four  convictions :  the  soul  as  well  as 
the  eye  can  see  and  perceive;  man  in  order  to  know  God,  must 
partake  of  his  nature;  without  holiness  no  man  can  see  God;  and 
love  is  the  sure  guide  on  the  upward  path.4  These  various  stipula- 
tions together  describe  a  temperament  or  habit  of  mind  that  is 
familiar  enough  to  readers  of  seventeenth-century  English  litera- 
ture. Even  if  one  agree  with  Miss  Underbill  that  "more  than 
the  apprehension  of  God,  then,  more  than  the  passion  for  the 
Absolute,  is  needed  to  make  a  mystic,"  these  men  of  letters  would 
still  be  included  in  her  interpretation ;  for  she  continues :  "  These 
must  be  combined  with  an  appropriate  psychological  make-up,  with 
a  nature  capable  of  extraordinary  concentration,  an  exalted  moral 
emotion,  a  nervous  organization  of  the  artistic  type." B 

Although  the  English  temperament  has  never  been  entirely 
sympathetic  toward  formal,  strictly  speculative,  mysticism  on  the 
one  hand,  or  its  extreme  sectarian  manifestations  on  the  other, 
many  English  poets  have  satisfied  these  broader  requirements.  In 
the  heat  of  religious  controversy  a  reaction  developed  against  dog- 
matism and  formalism  in  belief  and  worship.  Heart-weariness,  too, 
like  Lord  Falkland's  oppressed  many  finer  natures.  And  the  natural 
desire  of  man  to  know  more  of  life  than  earthly  experience  reveals, 
was  intensified  by  the  crisis  through  which  the  nation  was  passing. 
To  the  more  artistic,  susceptible  temperament  the  world  appeared 

•R.  A.  Vaughan,  Howrs  with  the  Mystics,  1,  pp.  17-21. 

•  P.  Berger,  William  Blake,  p.  72. 

4W.  R.  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism,  pp.  5-8. 

1  Mysticism,  p.  108. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  5 

suffused  with  heavenly  light,  and  men,  actuated  by  spiritual  ideals, 
made  the  search  for  God  the  engrossing  business  of  their  lives. 

A  plain  evidence  of  this  mystical  strain  in  English  character  is 
revealed  by  the  experiences  of  children  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
In  Grace  Abounding  John  Bunyan  placed  on  record  his  early  sins 
of  orchard-robbing,  violation  of  the  Fourth  Commandment,  and 
profanity.  Clearly  he  had  felt  them  most  keenly  in  youth  or  they 
would  not  have  given  this  morbid  tinge  to  his  mature  conscious- 
ness. Even  more  acute  were  the  religious  sensibilities  of  Nicholas 
Ferrar.  He  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy  London  merchant.  At  the 
age  of  six  he  was  already  thoroughly  familiar  with  Hebrew  history 
and  had  learned  the  Psalms  by  heart.  One  night,  unable  to  sleep, 
he  rose  and  walked  into  the  garden.  Throwing  himself  face  down- 
ward on  the  ground,  he  cried:  "Yes,  there  is,  there  must  be  a 
God :  and  he,  no  question,  if  I  duly  and  earnestly  seek  it  of  him, 
will  teach  me  not  only  how  to  know,  but  how  to  serve  him  accept- 
ably. He  will  be  with  me  all  my  life  here,  and  at  the  end  of  it 
will  make  me  happy  hereafter."  8  Such  emotion  in  childhood  seems 
to  us  almost  impossible;  but  Thomas  Traherne  told  of  a  still  more 
abnormal  psychological  experience.  "  Once  I  remember  (I  think  I 
was  about  four  years  old)  when  I  thus  reasoned  with  myself. 
Sitting  in  a  little  obscure  room  in  my  father's  poor  house :  If  there 
be  a  God  certainly  He  must  be  Infinite  in  Goodness,  and  that  I 
was  prompted  to,  by  a  real  whispering  instinct  of  nature.  And  if 
He  be  Infinite  in  Goodness  and  a  perfect  Being,  in  Wisdom  and 
Love,  certainly  He  must  do  most  glorious  things  and  give  us 
infinite  riches;  how  comes  it  to  pass,  therefore,  that  I  am  so 
poor?"7 

This  "  whispering  instinct  of  nature  "  that  Traherne  mentioned, 
describes  the  very  essence  of  mysticism ;  it  is  the  reception  of  divine 
truth  through  hidden,  spiritual  channels.  To  search  for  it  in  the 
Bible  as  Milton  did  in  compiling  Christian  Doctrine  or  to  trust,  as 
Hooker  did,  in  Christian  institutions,  is  not  mysticism.  The  mystic 
takes  usually  an  extremely  individualistic  point  of  view,  like  that 
of  Herbert  in  the  Temple  or  of  Bunyan  in  Pilgrim's  Progress. 
He  turns  his  gaze  inward,  in  the  belief  that  the  spirit  of  God  is 

6  F.  Turner,  Brief  Memoifs,  pp.  5-6. 

7  Meditations,  2,  16. 


6          Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

within  one,  and  that  only  an  attentive  heart  is  needed  for  a  sensing 
of  the  truth. 

Bunyan,  Ferrar,  and  Traherne,  whose  experiences  have  just  been 
cited,  were  all  imbued  with  deeply  religious  instincts.  The  same 
strain,  nevertheless,  occasionally  rose  to  the  surface  in  writers  so 
unspiritual  as  James  Howell.  Not  simply  to  exhibit  his  facility 
of  expression,  but  to  convey  as  well  a  real  experience  to  his  readers, 
that  interesting  adventurer  wrote  to  one  of  his  friends : 8 

So  having  got  into  a  close  field,  I  cast  my  face  upword,  and  fell  to 
consider  what  a  rare  prerogative  the  optic  virtue  of  the  Eye  hath,  much 
more  the  intuitive  virtue  in  the  Thought,  that  the  one  in  a  moment  can 
reach  Heaven,  and  the  other  go  beyond  it.  ...  What  then  should  we  think 
of  the  magnitude  of  the  Creator  himself.  Doubtless,  'tis  beyond  the  reach 
of  any  human  imagination  to  conceive  it:  In  my  private  devotions  I  pre- 
sume to  compare  Him  to  a  great  Mountain  of  Light,  and  my  soul  seems  to 
discern  some  glorious  Form  therein;  but  suddenly  as  she  would  fix  her 
eyes  upon  the  Object,  her  sight  is  presently  dazzled  and  disgregated  with 
the  refulgency  and  corruscations  thereof. 

Life,  one  suspects,  in  the  seventeenth  century  had  been  set  in 
part  to  a  new  key.  The  court,  be  it  granted,  was  more  corrupt  than 
it  had  been.  Hence  it  is  not  false  to  stress  the  difference  between 
the  new  type  of  courtier  and  the  old,  between  knights  such  as  Sir 
Kenelm  Digby  and  Sir  John  Suckling  on  the  one  hand,  and  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  and  Sir  Walter  Ealeigh,  on  the  other.  But  the  great 
bulk  of  the  people  in  the  later  generation  was  at  heart  religious. 
Although  it  was  in  many  ways  an  intensely  practical  age,  even 
in  their  daily  affairs  men  were  governed  by  spiritual  motives. 
Through  all  the  active  life  and  thinking  of  the  time,  the  spiritual 
and  the  worldly  operate  together,  as  they  do,  ?or  example,  in  those 
strange  camp-letters  of  Sergeant  Nehemiah  Wharton.  Many  men 
lived  through  such  an  experience  as  Mrs.  Browning's : 

When  I,  who  thought  to  sink, 
Was  caught  up  into  love  and  taught  the  whole 
Of  life  in  a  new  rhythm.* 

And  lessons  so  learned  when  the  spiritual  nature  was  set  to  this 
new  rhythm  were  carried  through  in  the  humdrum  duties  of 
ordinary  life;  for  in  Matthew  Arnold's  words, 

'Familiar  Letters,  2,  50. 

'  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  7. 


filbert  N.  8.  Thompson  7 

Tasks  in  hours  of  insight  will'd 

Can  be  through  hours  of  gloom  fulfiU'd.M 

The  experience  has  been  by  no  means  uncommon,  especially  among 
poets,  who  have  risen  most  readily  from  what  Eucken  calls  the 
natural  to  the  spiritual  level.11  On  that  level,  man  perceives 
through  new  channels,  and  perhaps  is  only  understood  by  those 
who  feel  with  him. 

The  difference  between  these  two  grades  of  experience  has  been 
well  stated  by  Eucken  and  Bergson,  but  it  would  be  better  to  let 
some  of  the  old  mystical  writers  present  it  in  their  own  defence. 
The  fact  in  question  is  quaintly  recognized  in  the  passage  of  the 
Religio  Medici  beginning :  "  Thus  is  Man  that  great  and  true 
Amphibium,  whose  nature  is  disposed  to  live,  not  onely  like  other 
creatures  in  divers  elements,  but  in  divided  and  distinguished 
worlds:  for  though  there  be  but  one  to  sense,  there  are  two  to 
reason,  the  one  visible,  the  other  invisible."  12  And  possibly  the 
ablest  defence  of  this  reading  of  life  is  presented  by  John  Norris. 
He  was  born  in  1657  in  Wiltshire  and  received  his  education  at 
Winchester  and  Oxford.  Then  in  1691  he  took  the  parish  at 
Bemerton,  where  holy  George  Herbert  had  closed  his  career  in  1633. 
In  that  quiet  spot,  Norris  preached  and  studied  and  wrote,  until 
in  1711  he  died,  "  having  exhausted  his  strength  by  intense  applica- 
tion and  long  habits  of  severe  reasoning."  On  the  south  side  of 
the  little  church  a  tablet  marks  the  grave  of  the  "  Kecluse  of 
Bemerton." 

John  Norris  recognized  the  difference  between  man's  perceptive 
faculties  on  the  lower  and  higher  levels  of  existence.  His  poem, 
The  Discouragement,  reads  in  part: 

Thought  I,  for  anything  I  know, 

What  we  have  stamp'd  for  science  here, 
Does  only  the  appearance  of  it  wear, 
And  will  not  pass  above,  tho  current  here  below; 
Perhaps  they've  other  rules  to  reason  by, 
And  what's  truth  hero,  with  them's  absurdity. 

We  truth  by  a  refracted  ray 

View,  like  the  sun  at  ebb  of  day; 

Whom  the  gross,  treacherous  atmosphere, 

Makes  where  it  is  not,  to  appear. 


M  Morality.  "  See  E.  Underbill,  Mysticism,  pp.  36,  40. 

u  Religio  Medici,  1.  34. 
7 


8          Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

In  order  to  justify  his  belief  that  man's  greatest  good  is  nearness 
to  this  higher  sphere  of  life,  Norris  wrote  again  in  On  a  Musician: 

Poor  dull  mistake  of  low  mortality, 
To  call  that  madness  which  is  ecstacy. 

Tis  no  disorder  of  the  brain, 
His  soul  is  only  set  fan  higher  strain. 
Out-soar  he  does  the  sphere  of  common  sense, 

Rais'd  to  diviner  excellence; 
But  when  at  highest  pitch,  his  soul  out-flies, 
Not  reason's  bounds,  but  those  of  vulgar  eyes. 

This  is  the  mystic's  best  defence.  He  rises  above  the  changing, 
temporal  world  to  another  by  purely  inner  motive  forces,  and, 
although  others  may  judge  him  abnormal  or  even  mad,  he  realizes 
that  he  differs  from  them  only  in  the  possession  of  a  truer  sanity, 
a  farther  vision,  than  theirs. 

Because  English  poetry  has  been  colored  at  all  times  by  mystical 
feeling,  the  poets  of  the  seventeenth  century  had  necessarily  their 
forerunners  in  the  sixteenth.  It  was  mysticism  of  the  Platonic 
sort  that  Spenser,  especially  in  The  Fowre  Hymnes,  brought  into 
literature.  But  Spenser,  like  Milton,  was  too  eclectic,  too  compre- 
hensive, to  be  classed  simply  as  a  mystic.  Of  the  early  poets  the 
Catholic  martyr,  Eobert  Southwell,  would  be  more  adequately 
described  by  that  term. 

Southwell  was  born  in  1560  or  1561  and  suffered  death  because 
of  his  faith  in  1595.  Knowing  the  imprisonment  and  tortures  that 
he  was  forced  to  undergo,  a  reader  finds  an  especial  poignancy  in 
some  of  his  lyrics.  Many  other  Elizabethans  had  written  on  the 
variability  of  Fortune  and  the  futility  of  worldly  ambition;  but 
what  Southwell  wrote  in  confinement  comes  to  us  fraught  with 
deeper  than  ordinary  feeling.  His  condition  there  was  "  deplor- 
able and  full  of  fears  and  dangers  " ;  others,  his  friends  whom  he 
mentions  in  the  letter  to  his  father,  had  already  suffered  "such 
cruel  usages  ...  as  can  scarce  be  believed/'  But  as  he  fortified 
himself  to  "  suffer  anything  that  can  come,  how  hard  soever  it  may 
be,"  he  realized  that  "life  is  but  loss"  and  eased  his  heart  in 
the  lyric : 

By  force  I  live,  in  will  I  wish  to  dye, 
In  playnte  I  passe  the  length  of  lingring  dayes; 

Free  would  my  soule  from  mortall  body  flye, 
And  tredd  the  track  of  death's  desyrfid  waies : 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  9 

Life  is  but  losse  where  death  is  deemed  gaine, 
And  loathed  pleasures  breed  displeasinge  payne. 

The  first  significant  feature  of  Southwell's  poems  is  the  stress 
that  they  place  on  the  inner  life  to  the  disregard  of  the  outer — 
the  true  mystic's  point  of  view.  "  Not  where  I  breath,  but  where 
I  love,  I  live/'  he  declared  in  one  poem,  and  in  another  he  returned 
to  the  same  thought  in  the  lines : 

Wiho  lives  in  love,  loves  lest  to  live, 

And  longe  del  ayes  doth  rue, 
If  Him  he  love  by  Whome  he  lives, 

To  Whome  all  love  is  dewe. 

Mourne,  therefore,  no  true  lover's  death, 

Life  onely  him  annoyes; 
And  when  he  taketh  leave  of  life, 

Then  love  beginns  his  joyes. 

Viewing  the  world  in  this  way,  Southwell,  even  in  his  distress, 
experienced  true  inward  happiness : 

My  conscience  is  my  crowne, 

Contented  thoughts  niy  rest; 
My  hart  is  happy  in  it  eelfe, 

My  blisse  is  in  my  breste." 

Thus  Southwell  schooled  himself  to  overlook  confinement  and 
torture,  which  were  mere  accidents  of  his  bodily  existence,  and  to 
think  simply  of  his  spiritual  state,  of  which  alone  he  could  boast 
full  control. 

On  this  matter  Southwell  reflects  very  plainly  the  influence  of 
Plato.  To  them  both  this  world  with  its  seeming  reality  is  merely 
the  shadow  of  the  stable,  ideal  world,  and  nowhere  here  on  earth 
can  one  find  more  than  imperfect  copies  of  the  true  beauty,  love, 
justice,  and  honor  that  exist  elsewhere.  One  of  the  most  thought- 
ful of  the  poems  that  develop  the  contrast  between  the  earthly  and 
the  ideal  reality  is  LooJce  Home: 

Eetyred  thoughtes  enjoy  their  own  delightes, 

As  beauty  doth  in  self-behoulding  eye; 

Man's  mynde  a  mirrhour  is  of  heavenly  sightes, 

A  breife  wherein  all  marveylls  summ&d  lye, 

Of  fayrest  formes  and  sweetest  shapes  the  store, 

Most  gracefull  all,  yet  thought  may  grace  them  more. 


u  See  I  Dye  Alive,  Life's  Death,  Love's  Life,  and  Oontent  and  Ritche. 


10         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

The  mynde  a  creature  is,  yet  can  create, 

To  Nature's  paterns  adding  higher  skill; 

Of  fynest  workes  witt  better  could  the  state 

If  force  of  witt  had  equall  poure  of  will; 

Devise  of  man  in  working  hath  no  ende; 

What  thought  can  thinke  an  other  thought  can  mende. 

Man's  soule  of  endles  bewtye's  image  is, 
Drawen  by  the  worke  of  endles  skill  and  might; 
This  skillfull  might  gave  many  sparkes  of  blisse, 
And  to  discerne  this  blisse  a  native  light; 
To  frame  God's  image  as  His  worthea  requir'd, 
His  might,  His  skill,  His  worde  and  will  conspir'd. 

All  that  he  had  His  image  should  present, 
All  that  it  should  present  he  could  afforde, 
To  that  he  coulde  afforde  his  will  was  bente, 
His  will  was  followed  with  performinge  worde; 
Lett  this  suffice,  by  this  conceave  the  rest, 
He  should,  he  could,  he  would,  he  did  the  best. 

Few  of  Southwell's  poems  are  so  charged  with  thought  as  is  this. 
It  contains  not  only  the  Platonic  concept  of  an  ideal  world,  of 
which  this  is  but  an  imperfect  copy,  but  also  Southwell's  faith  in 
the  "  native  light "  of  the  soul  and  the  creative  force  of  the  mind 
and  his  confident  optimism.  Of  these  ideas  Coleridge's  exposition 
of  the  "  esemplastic  principle,"  "  the  shaping  spirit  of  imagination," 
and  Leibnitz's  doctrine  that  this  is  the  best  possible  world,  are  but 
enlargements. 

The  usual  conclusion,  however,  of  Southwell's  reasoning  is  that 
man's  chief  happiness  lies  in  his  ability  to  rise  to  this  perfect  state. 
He  cries  in  one  lyric: 

Fayre  soule!  how  long  shall  veyles  thy  graces  shroud? 

How  long  shall  this  exile  withold  thy  right? 
When  will  thy  sunn  disperse  this  mortall  cloude, 

Aj>d  give  thy  glories  scope  to  blaze  their  light? 
0  that  a  starr,  more  fitt  for  angells'  eyes, 

Should  pyne  in  earth,  not  shyne  above  the  skyes!  u 

And  in  another  poem  Southwell  attempts  to  show  the  reasonable- 
ness of  his  position : 

Misdeeming  Eye!  that  stoopest  to  the  lure 
Of  mortall  worthes,  not  worth  so  worthy  love; 


uAt  Home  in  Heaven. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  11 

All  beautye's  base,  all  graces  are  impure, 

That  do  thy  erring  thoughtes  from  God  remove. 

Sparkes  to  the  fire,  the  beames  yeld  to  the  sunne, 
All  grace  to  God,  from  Whome  all  graces  runne. 

If  picture  move,  more  should  the  paterne  please; 

No  shadow  can  with  shadowed  thinge  compare, 
And  fayrest  shapes,  whereon  our  loves  do  ceaze, 

But  sely  signes  of  God's  high  beautyes  are. 
Go,  sterving  sense,  feede  thou  on  earthly  maste; 

Trewe  love,  in  heaven  seeke  thou  thy  sweete  repast." 

But  in  addition  to  this  more  common  reflection  of  the  Dialogues, 
Southwell's  thought  embraces  much  Neo-Platonism.  Its  almost 
inevitable  tendency  to  pantheism,  for  example,  is  reflected  in  the 
phrase  "  God  present  is  at  once  in  every  place."  Yet  this  belief  in 
the  essential  unity  of  creation,  all  being  but  an  emanation  from 
God,  does  not  lessen  Southwell's  sense  of  man's  individuality,  or 
God's ;  for  "  One  soule  in  man  is  all  in  everye  part,"  and  "  God  in 
every  place  is  ever  one."  16 

Seldom,  however,  do  the  English  poets  lose  themselves  in  the 
speculations  of  the  Christian  Platonists.  The  reader,  then,  is  not 
puzzled,  as  he  is  in  reading  Ficino,  Bruno,  or  Boehme,  with  strange 
terms  and  difficult  abstractions.  The  task  set  the  reader  of  these 
poets  is  to  look  on  life  as  they  depict  it  and  see  nothing  incongruous 
in  their  forms  of  expression.  For  example,  in  addressing  the 
wound  in  Christ's  side  in  this  concrete  way, 

O  pleasant  port!     O  place  of  rest! 

O  royal  rift!     O  worthy  wound! 
Come  harbour  me,  a  weary  guest, 

That  in  the  world  no  ease  have  found, 

Southwell  may  seem  to  materialize  his  purely  spiritual  emotion.  But 
the  finding  in  everything  visible  and  tangible  a  sacrament  of 
spiritual  life  is  an  ever-present  trait  of  mysticism,  which  often 
brings  into  sacred  verse  the  appearence  of  materialism  and  irrever- 
ence. The  reader  has  to  perceive,  as  the  author  does,  what  lies 
beyond  the  symbols  used  to  express  the  emotion.  If  this  be  done, 
such  a  poem  as  The  Burning  Babe,  possibly  Southwell's  finest,  can 
be  appreciated  for  its  simplicity,  its  power,  its  vision. 

v  Lewd  Love  is  Losse. 

M  Of  the  Blessed  Sacrament. 


12          Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

As  I  in  hoary  Winter's  night  stood  shiveringe  in  the  snowe, 

Surpris'd  I  was  with  sodayne  heat,  which  made  my  hart  to  glowe; 

And  liftinge  upp  a  fearefull  eye  to  vewe  what  fire  was  nere, 

A  prety  Babe  all  burninge  bright,  did  in  the  ayre  appeare, 

Who  scorched  with  excessive  heate,  such  floodes  of  teares  did  shedd, 

As  though  His  floodes  should  quench  His  flames  which  with  His  teares 

were  fedd; 

Alas !  quoth  He,  but  newly  borne,  in  fiery  heates  I  f rye, 
Yet  none  approch  to  warme  their  hartes  or  feele  my  fire  but  I! 
My  faultles  brest  the  fornace  is,  the  fuell  woundinge  thornes, 
Love  is  the  fire,  and  sighes  the  smoke,  the  ashes  shame  and  scornes; 
The  fuell  Justice  layeth  on,  and  Mercy  blowes  the  coales, 
The  mettall  in  this  fornace  wrought  are  men's  defiled  soules, 
For  which,  as  nowe  on  fire  I  am,  to  worke  them  to  their  good, 
So  will  I  melt  into  a  bath  to  washe  them  in  My  bloode : 
With  this  He  vanisht  out  of  sight,  and  swiftly  shroncke  awaye, 
And  straight  I  called  unto  mynde  that  it  was  Christmas-daye. 

In  all  these  respects  the  poems  of  Southwell  represent  Platonism 
as  it  was  adapted  to  the  Christian  belief  by  early  churchmen  and 
transmuted  by  the  art  of  modern  poets.  For  the  Christian  philoso- 
pher Platonism  would  signify,  "an  unshaken  confidence  in  the 
ultimate  validity  of  ideas,  with  a  tendency  to  suspect  the  data  of 
the  senses,  and  to  insist  on  the  unreality  of  the  phenomenal."  17  A 
Platonist,  consequently,  would  believe  that,  transcending  the  reach 
of  sensory  experience  and  reason,  there  is  a  mystic,  spiritual  way 
of  apprehending  ultimate  truth.  He  would  find  in  the  Dialogues, 
likewise,  confirmation  of  his  belief  in  the  existence  of  God  and  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  and  would  accept,  as  kindred  teaching, 
the  idea  of  an  unchanging,  intelligible  world  above  this  world  of 
shadows,  and  would  stress  the  need  of  focussing  our  aspirations  on 
that  other  world.  Such  were  the  lessons  that  Plotinus  for  the 
philosophers  and  Augustine  for  the  churchmen  learned  from  Plato. 

The  influence  of  Plato  during  the  seventeenth  century  made  itself 
felt  in  English  scholarship  chiefly  at  Cambridge,  and  in  English 
poetry  mainly  through  the  writings  of  Edmund  Spenser.  At  Cam- 
bridge Neo-Platonism  found  the  soil  best  adapted  to  its  growth, 
Spenser,  himself  a  student  of  Pembroke  Hall,  wove  together  in  The 
Fowre  Hymnes  and  the  first  book  especially  of  the  Faerie  Queene 
the  fundamental  teachings  of  the  Socratic  dialogues.  Then  from 
Spenser,  who  exerted  the  most  potent  single  influence  on  the  poets 

"  P.  H.  Wicksteed,  Dante  and  Aquinas,  p.  25. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson 

of  the  next  century,  the  influence  of  Plato  was  handed  down  to 
Southwell,  Drummond,  Milton,  and  their  contemporaries. 

Bearing  this  in  mind  one  appreciates  the  historical  position  of 
the  work  done  in  his  secluded  home  by  William  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden.  The  opening  sonnet  of  Flowres  of  Sion,  after 
exhibiting  "the  instability  of  mortall  glorie,"  concludes  with  the 
lines: 

Wherefore  (my  Minde)   above  Time,  Motion,  Place, 
Thee  raise,  and  Steppes,  not  reach'd  by  Nature  trace. 

The  fourth  sonnet,  likewise,  which  Professor  Kastner  has  traced  to 
Petrarch  employs  these  comparisons  to  expose  the  unreality  of 
this  life: 

The  wearie  Mariner  so  fast  not  flies 

An  howling  Tempest,  Harbour  to  attaine, 

Nor  Sheepheard  hastes,  when  frayes  of  Wolves  arise, 

'So  fast  to  Fold  to  save  his  bleeting  Traine: 

As  I  (wing'd  with  Contempt  and  just  Disdaine) 

Now  flie  the  World,  and  what  it  most  doth  prize, 

And  Sanctuarie  seeke,  free  to  remaine 

From  wounds  of  abject  Times,  and  Envies  eyes. 

In  the  same  key  another  sonnet  was  written: 

Why  (worldlings)  do  ye  trust  fraile  honours  dreams? 
And  leane  to  guilted  Glories  which  decay? 

and  in  another  Drummond  makes  this  resolve : 

Hencefoorth  on  Thee  (mine  onelie  Good)  I  thinke, 
For  onelie  Thou  canst  grant  what  I  doe  crave.18 

The  same  ideas  recur  again  and  again  in  the  poetry  of  Drum- 
mond's  age.  Nicholas  Breton,  for  instance,  feeling  the  unreality 
of  the  phenomenal  world,  turned  to  the  ideal : 

In  Nature's  beautie,  all  the  best  can  be 
Are  shadowing  colours  to  deceiue  the  eye : 
But  in  this  beautie  may  our  spirits  see 
A  light  wherein  we  live,  and  cannot  die.1' 

This  light,  of  course,  is  God,  and  God,  whom  he  identifies  with 
Love,  is  the  source  of  all  things.  Breton's  own  words  are : 

u  Sonnets,  20,  5. 

a  Solus  in  toto  laudandus  Deus. 


l4         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

And  this  is  God,  and  this  same  God  is  Love; 
For  God  and  Love,  in  Charitie  are  one, 

and 

One  onely  light  that  shewea  one  onely  Love: 
One  onely  Love,  and  that  is  God  above. 

Assuredly,  much  of  this  poetry  is  imitative  and  uninspired.  A 
reader  is  apt  to  remember  only  the  first  line  of  George  Daniel's 
effort  that  begins: 

Lord!  yet  How  dull  am  I? 

When  I  would  flye; 
Up  to  the  Eegion  of  thy  Glories.10 

It  frequently  happens,  therefore,  that  certain  ideas  of  Plato  are 
incorporated  in  the  writings  of  poets  who  are  not  mystics  at  all. 
Lord  Herbert,  for  example,  never  rose  to  anything  higher  than 
this  Meditation: 

More  more  our  Souls  then,  when  they  go  from  hence, 
And  back  unto  the  Elements  dispense, 

All  that  built  up  our  frail  and  earthly  frame 
Shall  through  each  pore  and  passage  make  their  breach, 
Till  they  with  all  their  faculties  do  reach 

Unto  that  place  from  whence  at  first  they  came. 


And  therefore  I  who  do  not  live  and  move 
By  outward  sense  so  much  as  faith  and  love, 

Which  is  not  in  inferior  Creatures  found, 
May  unto  some  immortal  state  pretend, 
Since  by  these  wings  I  hitherto  may  ascend 

Where  faithful  loving  Souls  with  joys  are  crown'd." 

Yet  no  one  would  be  impelled  by  even  these  verses  to  count  the 
Quixotic  knight  of  the  Autobiography  among  the  mystics.  Even 
his  brother,  George  Herbert,  had  little  if  any  mysticism  in  his 
temperament.  His  poems  show  an  unfaltering  sense  of  the  nearness 
of  God ;  mind  and  heart  alike  are  wholly  preoccupied  with  thoughts 
of  him.  In  certain  of  his  poems,  furthermore,  Herbert  accepts  the 
teachings  of  Plato.  Of  these  pieces,  the  most  obvious  is  the  sonnet 
beginning,  "  Immortal  Love,  author  of  this  great  frame."  Yet 
never  in  the  Temple  is  there  a  vision  as  clear  as  Vaughan's 

"  Ed.  A.  B.  Grosart,  p.  13. 
"See  too  The  Idea. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  * 

I  saw  eternity  the  other  night 
Like  a  great  Ring  of  pure  and  endless  light, 
All  calm,  as  it  was  bright, 
or, 

I  see  them  walking  in  an  Air  of  glory, 

Whose  light  doth  trample  on  my  days: 
My  days,  which  are  at  best  but  dull  and  hoary, 

Meer  glimering  and  decays. 

Something  more,  then,  than  an  occasional  acceptance  of  Plato's 
thought  is  needed  to  make  a  mystic. 

No  one  of  these  poets  represents  all  sides  of  Plato's  varied  genius 
so  well  as  Spenser.22  Like  Plato,  Spenser  was  endowed  with  both 
a  highly  spiritual  and  a  richly  sensuous  temperament,  so  that  he 
enjoyed  to  the  fullest  the  beauty  of  the  visible  world  and  the 
impulse  of  the  spiritual  life.  Both  men  had  a  marked  gift  for 
allegorical  narrative,  and  each  valued  literature  chiefly  for  its 
moral  or  ethical  import.  Not  any  of  the  lesser  poets  following 
Spenser  was  deep  and  broad  enough  in  mental  grasp  to  embrace 
all  this;  for  even  Milton  could  not  harmonize  all  these  diverse 
elements.  Among  late  Elizabethan  poets,  then,  we  must  look  for 
Platonism  in  one  or  another  of  its  partial  manifestations. 

One  of  Pmmmond's  most  interesting  poems,  An  Hymn  of  the 
Fairest  Fair,  contains  in  addition  to  its  strict  Platonism  a  good 
deal  that  Christian  mystics  had  taught  of  God  and  the  world.  The 
poet  conceives  God,  to  whom  his  aspirations  rise,  as  the  great 
creator,  who  in  his  love  called  forth  into  existence  all  things 
that  are. 

I  Feele  my  Bosome  glow  with  wontlesse  Fires, 

Rais'd  from  the  vulgar  prease  my  Mind  aspires 

(WingM  with  high  Thoghts)  vnto  his  praise  to  clime, 

From  deepe  Eternitie  who  call'd  foorth  Time; 

That  Essence  which  not-mou'd  makes  each  thing  moue, 

Vncreat'd  Beautie  all-creating  Loue; 

But  by  so  great  an  object,  radient  light, 

My  Heart  appall'd,  enfeebled  restes  my  Sight, 

Thicke  Cloudes  bcnighte  my  labouring  Ingine, 

And  at  my  high  attempts  my  Wits  repine. 

Through  these  clouds,  despite  his  thwarted  faculties,  the  poet  sees 
God  on  his  throne : 

*L.  Winstanley,  The  Fowre  Hymnes  and  J.  S.  Harrison,  Platonism  in 
English  Poetry. 


16         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

As  farre  beyond  the  starrie  walles  of  Heaven, 

As  is  the  loftiest  of  the  Planets  seuen 

Sequestred  from  this  Earth,  in  purest  light, 

Out-shining  ours,  as  ours  doth  sable  Night, 

Thou,  All-sufficient,  Omnipotent, 

Thou  euer-glorious,  most  excellent, 

God  various  in  Names,  in  Essence  one, 

High  art  enstalled  on  a  golden  Throne, 

Out-reaching  Heavens  wide  Vastes,  the  Bounds  or  nought, 

Transcending  all  the  Circles  of  our  Thought. 

After  this  mystical  vision  of  God,  dwelling  in  indescribable  light, 
far  transcending  all  powers  of  thought,  and  boundless  in  his  reach, 
Drummond  attempts  to  define  his  being.  He  first  stresses  the 
unity  of  God,  arguing  that  the  Trinity,  though  threefold  and 
symbolized  in  human  life  by  the  understanding,  memory,  and  will, 
is  one,  as  spring,  well-head,  and  stream  are  one.  He  regards  this 
God  as  the  center  of  all  life,  and  explains  the  creation  according 
to  Plotinus'  doctrine  of  emanation.  God  first  brought  forth  the 
"  immortal  Traines  of  Intellectual!  Powr's  "  who  attend  him.  They 
are  ranged  about  the  throne  in  heavenly  bands,  according  to  the 
hierarchic  scheme  of  Dionysius.  Beneath  these  heavenly  hosts  is 
the  great  and  manifold  world  of  nature, 

The  Organes  of  thy  Prouidence  diuine, 
Bookes  euer  open,  Signes  that  clearlie  shine.*8 

Then  human  life  finds  its  place.  Originally,  man  stood  above  nature, 
until  the  sin  in  the  garden  displaced  him;  all  nature  served  him, 
and  angels  passed  freely  from  heaven  to  earth.  Over  this  vast 
creation,  spiritual  and  material,  God  rules  in  perfect  unity.  Yet 
Drummond  sees  his  spirit  everywhere ; 

Whole  and  entire  all  in  thy  Self e  thou  art, 
Ail-where  diffus'd,  yet  of  this  all  no  part, 
For  infinite,  in  making  this  faire  Frame, 
(Great  without  quantitie)  in  all  thou  came, 
And  filling  all,  how  can  thy  State  admit, 
Or  Place  or  Substance  to  be  voide  of  it? 


"•Of.  Dionysius  the  Areopagite:  "All  things  have  emanated  from  God, 
and  the  end  of  all  is  return  to  God,"  and  "The  degree  of  real  existence 
possessed  by  any  being  is  the  amount  of  God  in  that  being."  From 
Vaughan,  i,  pp.  113-115.  The  orders  assigned  by  Dionysius  to  the  heavenly 
hosts  are  fully  explained  by  the  seventeenth-century  poet  and  playwright, 
Thomas  Heywood,  in  The  Hierarchy  of  the  Blessed  Angels. 


Elbert  N.  S.  Thompson  17 

So  also  are  all  times  present  to  Him; 

All  Times  to  thee  are  one,  that  which  hath  runne, 
And  that  which  is  not  brought  yet  by  the  Sunne, 
To  thee  are  present,  who  dost  alwayes  see 
In  present  act,  what  past  is  or  to  bee. 

This  entire  conception  is  in  harmony  with  the  teaching  of  the 
mystics.  One  is  not  surprised,  then,  to  find  the  poem  closing  with 
their  sense  of  the  incomprehensibility  of  God. 

0  King,  whose  Greatnesse  none  can  comprehend, 
Whose  boundlesse  Goodnesse  doth  to  all  extend, 
Light  of  all  Beautie,  Ocean  without  ground, 
That  standing  flowest,  giuing  dost  abound, 
Eich  palace,  and  Indweller  euer  blest, 

Neuer  not  working  euer  yet  in  Kest; 

'What  wit  cannot  conceiue,  words  say  of  Thee, 

Heere  where  as  in  a  Mirrour  wee  but  see, 

Shadowes  of  shadowes,  Atomes  of  thy  Might, 

Still  owlie  eyed  when  staring  on  thy  Light, 

Grant  that  released  from  this  earthly  laile, 

And  fred  of  Clouds  which  heere  our  Knowledge  vaile, 

In  Heauens  high  Temples,  where  thy  Praises  ring, 

1  may  in  sweeter  Notes  heare  Angels  sing. 

In  perfect  keeping  with  this  great  poem  is  Drummond's  solemn, 
awe-inspired  meditation  in  prose  on  death.  Many  of  the  thoughts 
of  A  Cypresse  Grove  came  to  the  author  from  foreign  sources, 
Montaigne's  Essais,  Charron's  De  la  Sagesse,  and  Kinghiere's 
Didloghi  delta  vita  et  della  morte.2*  But  the  stately  movement  of 
the  prose  and  the  rich  coloring,  are  Drummond's  own.  He  had 
brooded  in  quiet  on  this  question  of  life  and  death  until  his 
thoughts,  whatever  their  sources  may  have  been,  belonged  to  him. 
The  world  is  beautiful,  he  sees,  and  the  body  serves  the  needs  of 
the  soul ;  but,  for  all  that,  it  is  no  fearful  thing  to  die.  "My  Soule, 
what  aileth  thee,"  he  cries,  "  to  bee  thus  backward  and  astonished, 
at  the  remembrance  of  Death,  sith  it  doth  not  reach  Thee,  more 
than  Darknesse  doth  those  f arre-shining  Lampes  above  ?  "  Death 
merely  permits  man,  like  a  storm-tossed  mariner,  to  "  stricke  Saile 
and  joyfullie  enter  the  leas  of  a  save  Harbour."  25  Even  savages 
have  had  "  some  roving  guesses  at  Ages  to  come,  and  a  Glow-worme 

M  See  notes  to  Professor  Kastner's  edition. 
* II,  pp.  89-90. 


18        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

light  of  another  life."  Drummond's  own  vision  of  that  other  life 
is  finely  expressed  at  the  close :  "  Then  sRall  there  bee  an  end 
without  an  end,  Time  shall  finish,  and  Place  shall  bee  altered, 
Motion  yeelding  vnto  Rest,  and  another  World  of  an  Age  eternall 
and  vnchangeable  shall  arise." 

Thus  the  English  sacred  poets,  true  Platonists  that  they  were, 
habitually  contrasted  the  unreality  of  this  world  with  the  reality 
of  the  other.  No  one  01  them  was  more  deeply  imbued  with 
this  feeling  than  Henry  Vaughan,  the  Welsh  physician.  Biding 
along  the  rustic  roads  on  his  professional  errands,  he  was  keenly 
alive  to  all  the  beauties  of  nature,  especially  the  stars,  God's  "  hosts 
of  spyes."  But  he  looked  on  these  natural  objects  only  as  symbols 
of  a  higher  beauty,  "whose  meaner  showes  and  outward  utensils 
these  glories  are."  2e  Such  a  temperament  may  have  been  in  the 
mind  of  John  Norris  when  he  wrote :  "  How  happy  is  the  Man  that 
can  do  so!  that  can  Conduct  and  Govern  his  Steps  by  the  bright 
Views  of  the  other  world  and  not  by  the  dim  appearances  of  this." 2T 
Lovers  of  Wordsworth,  therefore,  have  always  taken  a  peculiar 
interest  in  Vaughan.  The  great  romantic  poet  was  oppressed  with 
the  idea  that  "  the  world  is  too  much  with  us."  Owing  to  exactly 
the  same  distrust  of  the  business  of  life,  Vaughan  long  before  had 
written: 

The  world 

Is  full  of  voices;  Man  is  call'd,  and  hurl'd 
By  each;  he  answers  all, 
Knows  ev'ry  note,  and  call, 

Hence,  still 
Fresh  dotage  tempts,  or  old  usurps  his  will.* 

Vaughan's  prayer  then  is : 

Come  and  releive, 

And  tame,  and  keepe  downe  with  thy  light 
Dust  that  would  rise  and  dimme  my  sight! 
Lest  left  alone  too  long 
Amidst  the  noise  and  throng, 

Oppressed  I, 
Striving  to  save  the  whole,  by  parcels  dye. 

Or  again,  his  mind  still  running  in  grooves  that  Wordsworth's 
followed,  he  petitions  for 


"  Midnight,  p.  36,  Retirement,  p.  92. 

"A  Discourse  of  Walking- by  Faith,  p.  134. 

*   TMot*-nf+in*t       r\      A1  5 


1  Distraction,  p.  413. 


Elbert  N.  S.  Thompson  19 

A  living  Faith,  a  Heart  of  flesh, 
The  World  an  Enemie.» 

Yet  from  inanimate  nature  Vaughan  derived  many  truly  Words- 
worthian  lessons.  Everything,  as  he  understood  the  world,  joins 
in  praise  of  the  Creator ; 

So  hilla  and  valleys  into  pinging  break, 
And  though  poor  stones  have  neither  speech  nor  tongue, 
While  active  winds  and  streams  both  run  and  speak, 
Yet  stones  are  deep  in  admiration.10 

Consequently  in  The  Starre,  Vaughan  resolves: 

Yet,  seeing  all  things  that  subsist  and  be 
Have  their  Commissions  from  Divinitie, 

And  teach  us  duty,  I  will  see 

What  man  may  learn  from  thee. 

From  the  lessons  so  learned  came  Vaughan's  highest  inspiration. 
One  of  the  finest  of  his  poems,  though  it  was  prompted  by  a  verse 
of  Romans,  expresses  only  this  fervent  belief  in  the  spirituality  of 
all  nature. 

And  do  they  so?  have  they  a  Sense 

Of  ought  but  Influence? 
Can  they  their  heads  lift,  and  expect, 

And  grone  too?  why  th'  Elect, 
Can  do  no  more:  my  volumes  sed 

They  were  all  dull,  and  dead; 
They  judg'd  them  senselesse  and  their  state 
Wholly  Inanimate. 
Go,  go;  Seal  up  thy  looks, 
And  burn  thy  books! 

I  would  I  were  a  stone,  or  tree, 

Or  flowre  by  pedigree, 
Or  some  poor  high-way  herb,  or  Spring 

To  flow,  or  bird  to  sing! 
Then  should  I  (tyed  to  one  sure  state,) 

All  day  expect  my  date; 
But  I  am  sadly  loose,  and  stray 
A  giddy  blast  each  way. 
0  let  me  not  thus  range! 
Thou  canst  not  change. 

This  is  possibly  Vaughan's  most  usual  theme.    In  moments  when 
such  impulse  does  not  move  him  he  often  grows  dull  and  clumsy 

"  Day  of  Judgment,  p.  403.  »  The  Bird,  p.  497. 


Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

in  thought  and  expression.  He  is  invariably  weakest  if  mind 
rather  than  sub-conscious  emotion  assumes  the  creative  role.  But 
whenever  the  world  appears  radiant  with  this  white,  heavenly  light, 
the  poet's  emotion  quickens,  and  moves  upward  on  the  spiritual 
ladder  that  mystics  coveted  to  find. 

So  in  Vaughan's  eyes  the  world  appeared  as  it  did  to  the 
Spanish  mystic,  Eose  of  Lima.  For  her  the  whole  creation  was 
filled  with  God.  At  sunrise  she  passed  through  her  garden  and 
invited  all  objects  there  to  join  her  hymn  of  praise;  The  trees 
bowed  as  she  passed  by;  the  flowers  swayed  on  their  stalks  and 
opened  to  the  light;  the  birds  sang  and  even  the  insects  voiced 
their  adoration.81  Strange  as  all  this  seems,  Vaughan  too  had 
experienced  it; 

When  in  the  East  the  Dawn  doth  blush, 

Here  cool,  fresh  Spirits  the  air  brush; 

Herbs  (strait)  get  up;  Flow'rs  peepe  and  spread; 

Trees  whisper  praise,  and  bow  the  head. 

Birds  from  the  shades  of  night  releast 

Look  round  about,  then  quit  the  neast, 

And  with  united  gladness  sing 

The  glory  of  the  morning's  King. 

The  Hermit  hears,  and  with  meek  voice 

Offers  his  own  up,  and  their  Joys; 

Then  prays,  that  all  the  world  may  be 

Blest  with  as  sweet  an  unity.** 

Another  poet-mystic,  Thomas  Traherne,  loved  nature  in  this 
same  two-fold  way — for  its  own  beauty  and  as  a  symbol  of  the 
divine.  That  retired  clergyman,  though,  seems  never  to  have  seen 
it  in  its  proper  earthly  light,  but  always  suffused  with  a  sheen  from 
heaven.  Like  Wordsworth,  he  had  felt  the  shades  of  the  "prison 
house  "  closing  upon  him  as  a  growing  boy,  and  had  found  himself 
in  "  a  waste  place  covered  with  idleness  and  play,  and  shops,  and 
markets,  and  taverns."  *8  Life  was  only  interesting  as  it  appeared 
to  him  illuminated  by  his  own  unique  personality.  What  this  was, 
his  own  words  can  best  reveal: 

The  corn  was  orient  and  immortal  wheat  which  never  should  be  reaped 
nor  was  ever  sown.  I  thought  it  had  stood  from  everlasting  to  everlasting. 
The  dust  and  stones  of  the  street  were  as  precious  as  gold:  the  gates  were 


B  E.  Underbill,  If ystidsm,  p.  313. 

*  The  Bee,  p.  652.  **  Meditations,  3.  14. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  21 

at  first  the  end  of  the  world.  The  green  trees  when  I  saw  them  first 
through  one  of  the  gates  transported  and  ravished  me;  their  sweetness  and 
unusual  beauty  made  my  heart  to  leap,  and  almost  mad  with  ecstacy,  they 
were  such  strange  and  wonderful  things.  The  Men!  0  what  venerable  and 
reverend  creatures  did  the  aged  seem!  Immortal  Cherubims!  And  young 
men  glittering  and  sparkling  angels,  and  maids  strange  seraphic  pieces  of 
life  and  beauty!  Boys  and  girls  tumbling  in  the  street  were  moving 
jewels ;  I  knew  not  that  they  were  born  or  should  die.8* 

Just  this  same   shimmer   of  unreality  plays  over   Traherne's 
poems.    Looking  out  on  the  world,  he  asks, 

Where  are  the  silent  streams, 

The  living  waters  and  the  glorious  beams, 

The  sweet  reviving  bowers, 

The  shady  groves,  the  sweet  and  curious  flowers, 

The  springs  and  trees,  the  heavenly  days, 

The  flow'ry  meads,  and  glorious  rays, 

The  gold  and  silver  towers? 

Here,  through  this  strange  environment,  moved  no  real  substantial 
human  figures; 

The  streets  were  paved  with  golden  stones, 

The  boys  and  girls  were  mine, 
Oh  how  did  all  their  lovely  faces  shine! 

The  sons  of  men  were  holy  ones, 
In  joy  and  beauty  they  appeared  to  me, 

And  every  thing  which  here  I  found, 
While  like  an  angel  I  did  see, 

Adorned  the  ground.*5 

Such  complete  transformation  of  reality  can  he  found  in  English 
literature  only  in  the  work  of  Traherne  and  Blake.  Eeality  to  both 
men  was  entirely  subjective  not  objective;  for  they  gained  con- 
sciousness of  the  finite  through  the  infinite,  as  Malbranche  did. 
Traherne  seems  even  to  anticipate  the  later  philosophic  denial  of 
material  reality.  In  The  Preparative,  at  least,  he  writes : 

Tis  not  the  object,  but  the  light 

That  maketh  Heaven:  'tis  a  purer  sight. 

Felicity 
Appears  to  none  but  them  that  purely  see. 

The  possession  of  this  purer  sight  determined  Traherne's  peculiar 
temperament,  and  in  his  verse  and  prose  alike  there  runs  a  mystical 

"Ibid.,  3.  3.  *  Desire,  p.  120;  Wonder,  p.  5. 


22         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

philosophy  that  resembles  closely  the  subjective  idealism  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

No  one  of  these  mystical  poets,  in  calling  on  man  to  rise  to  a 
higher  spiritual  existence,  meant  any  disparagement  of  the  world 
in  which  our  lives  are  passed.  They  were  Platonists,  in  that  regard, 
rather  than  Neo-Platonists.  The  material  world,  however  unreal 
and  shadow-like  it  may  be  called,  is  rich  in  beauty,  and,  as  a  symbol 
of  the  higher  life,  filled  with  significance.  This  idea  is  the  most 
pervading  of  the  few  threads  of  mystical  thought  that  are  woven 
into  Habington's  Castara.  The  same  opinion  of  the  world  appears 
is  Crashaw's  highly  mystical  poetry.  And  Francis  Quarles,  after 
the  ascetic's  indictment, 

False  world,  thou  ly'st:  thou  canst  not  lend 
The  least  delight, 

can  argue  as  a  true  Platonist  that  this  world  is  fair  only  in  com- 
parison with  another.  But  possibly  the  best  example  of  a  poet's 
reconciling  his  love  for  things  seen  with  a  contempt  bred  of  a 
stronger  love  elsewhere,  is  found  in  John  Norris's  Aspiration. 
Looking  forth  from  the  "  dark  prison "  in  which  his  soul  lay 
enchained,  Norris  exclaimed: 

How  cold  this  clime !  and  yet  my  sense 

Perceives  even  here  thy  influence. 
Even  here  thy  strong  magnetic  charms  I  feel, 
And  pant  and  tremble  like  the  amorous  steel. 
To  lower  good,  and  beauties  less  divine 
Sometimes  my  erroneous  needle  does  decline; 

But  yet — so  strong  the  sympathy — 

It  turns,  and  points  again  to  thee. 

A  reader  who  has  become  accustomed  to  the  poet's  way  of 
harmonizing  these  two  feelings  will  not  see  in  the  opening  lines 
of  Comus  any  indication  of  that  disregard  of  nature  that  Milton 
so  unjustly  has  been  accused  of  showing.  It  would  be  needless  to 
quote  Milton's  vision  of  the  life 

In  regions  mild  of  calm  and  serene  air, 
Above  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot 
Which  men  call  earth. 

Less  commonly  known  is  the  beautiful  sentiment  of  Vaughan  at  the 
close  of  The  World: 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  23 

Yet  some,  who  all  this  while  did  weep  and  sing, 
And  sing,  and  weep,  soar'd  up  into  the  Ring, 

But  most  would  use  no  wing. 
O  fools  (said  I,)  thus  to  prefer  dark  night 

Before  true  light, 
To  live  in  grots,  and  caves,  and  hate  the  day 

Because  it  shews  the  way, 
The  way  which  from  this  dead  and  dark  abode 

Leads  up  to  God, 
A  way  where  you  might  tread  the  Sun,  and  be 

More  bright  than  he. 

The  same  aspiration  evokes  the  prayer: 

Grant  I  may  so 
Thy  steps  track  here  below, 
That  in  these  Masques  and  shadows  I  may  see 

Thy  sacred  way; 
And  by  those  hid  ascents  climb  to  that  day, 

Which  breaks  from  thee 
Who  art  in  all  things,  though  invisibly. 

And  with  these  lines  come  to  mind  many  other  poems  by  Vaughan, 
such  as  the  lyric 

My  Soul,  There  is  a  Countrie 
Afar  beyond  the  stars; 

for  he  had  come  to  the  belief  that  some  men  "  walk  to  the  skie  even 
in  this  life."  Hence,  although  he  felt  a  deep  joy  in  this  world,  he 
loved  the  other  so  much  more  fervently  that  his  creed  is  wholly 
summed  up  in  these  two  injunctions:  "run  on  and  reach  home 
with  the  light "  and  "  fill  thy  bresst  with  home."  3<J 

Men  of  a  more  metaphysical  turn  of  mind,  like  the  poefs  brother, 
Thomas  Vaughan,  often  sought  in  philosophy  a  reason  for  this 
uprising  of  the  soul.  Plotinus  and  the  Neo-Platonists  had  explained 
the  creation  of  the  universe  as  a  process  of  emanation.  Every  part 
oi  the  universe  came  forth,  more  or  less  immediately,  from  the 
creative  energy  of  God,  and  each  part,  still  moved  by  God's  spirit, 
craves  union  with  him.  No  other  force  is  necessary  to  raise  Dante 
in  the  Paradise  swiftly  through  the  heavens;  for  the  soul  ascends 
as  naturally  as  flame  rises  or  as  water  in  a  rivulet  flows  to  a  lower 
level.  Milton's  acceptance  of  at  least  the  physical  aspects  of  the 

"  See  Man,  Peace,  Ascension  Hymn,  The  Resolve,  and  The  Proffer. 
8 


2.k        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

theory  is  revealed  in  Paradise  Lost*7  while  John  Norris  in  the 
Hymn  on  the  Creation  considers  its  spiritual  significance  in  these 
lines: 

We,  acted  by  the  weights  of  strong  desire 
To  good  without  ourselves  aspire, 

We're  always  moving  hence 
Like  lines  from  the  circumference, 
To  some  more  inlodg'd  excellence, 
But  He  is  one  unmov'd  self-center'd  point  of  rest. 

As  a  rule,  however,  the  poets  have  dwelt  but  little  on  the  meta- 
physics of  the  question :  it  was  with  them,  as  with  Henry  Vaughan, 
a  feeling  and  not  a  theory — "a  roving  extasie  to  find  my 
Saviour/' 88 

Of  all  the  poets  of  the  Jacobean  age  Donne  would  be  least 
suspected  of  a  mystical  turn  of  mind.  His  keen,  restless  intellect, 
his  constant  dependence  on  the  external  features  of  daily  life  for 
his  illustrative  material,  as  well  as  his  open  cynicism  and  irrever- 
ence in  the  Elegies  and  Songs,  would  isolate  him,  necessarily  it 
appears,  from  the  spmtual  forces  of  the  day.  This,  however,  was 
not  the  case.  Cynicism,  impudent  ribaldry,  realism  tingle  in  his 
early  verse.  Yet  not  even  Browning  recognized  more  unqualifiedly 
than  Donne  that  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  the  matter  of  sole  moment 
to  man. 

I  wonder  by  my  troth  what  thou  and  I 
Did  till  we  loved, 

he  asks,  forgetful  of  all  the  soul-stirring  episodes  of  his  venture- 
some youth.  This  was  not  because  Donne  scorned  or  despised  our 
bodies :  rather, 

We  owe  them  thankes,  because  they  thus, 

Did  us,  to  us,  at  first  convay, 
Yeelded  their  forces,  sense,  to  us, 

Nor  are  drosse  to  us,  but  allay." 

But  the  spirit's  welfare  seemed  of  greater  importance  than  the 
body's.  The  passion  of  true  love,  for  example,  can  so  unite  two 
persons  that  they  become  as  one ; 

Love,  these  mixt  soules,  doth  mixe  againe, 
And  makes  both  one,  each  this  and  that. 

»  Par.,  1 ;  P.  L.,  5, 11.  414-426.  *  The  Search. 

"  The  Extasie,  p.  52. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  25 

Once  so  united,  a  separation  is  impossible,  whatever  the  accidents 
of  life  may  be ;  for 

They  who  one  another  keepe 
Alive,  ne'r  parted  bee.40 

Love,  in  other  words,  is  a  passion  of  the  heart  that  raises  man 
above  the  limiting  conditions  of  physical  existence  into  the  freedom 
of  the  spiritual  world.  And  by  mental  energy  even  God  and  man 
are  united;  for  God  is  both  the  ultimate  end  of  knowledge  and 
the  source  of  knowledge  in  man.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the 
strange  lines  of  the  Second  Anniversary: 

Only  who  have  enjoy'd 
ffhe  sight  of  God  in  fulness  can  think  it; 
For  it  is  both  the  object  and  the  wit. 

Therefore  Donne  could  disregard  material  good  fortune  or  ill 

fortune,  seeing  that 

Nothing 

Is  worth  our  travaile,  griefe,  or  perishing, 
But  those  rich  joyes,  which  did  possesse  her  heart.41 

If  this  conviction  be  one  of  the  foundation  stones  of  Donne's  poetry, 
the  transition  after  all  is  not  hard  from  the  secular  poems  of  his 
youth  to  the  finest  of  his  sacred  verse,  "At  the  round  Earth's 
imagined  corners  blow  "  and  "  Death,  be  not  proud." 

In  some  notable  respects  Donne's  habits  of  thought,  like  certain 
aspects  of  his  temperament,  were  alien  to  mysticism.  For  example, 
he  had  sufficient  trust  in  man's  normal  power  to  believe  that  "  the 
articles  of  faith  are  discernible  by  reason."  Upon  that  authority 
he  rested  his  conviction  "that  as  there  is  a  God,  that  God  must 
be  worshipped  according  to  his  will,  that  therefore  that  will  of 
God  must  be  declared  and  manifested  somewhere,  that  this  is  done 
in  some  permanent  way,  in  some  Scripture,  which  is  the  word  of 
God,  that  this  book,  which  we  call  the  Bible,  is,  by  better  reason 
than  any  others  can  pretend,  that  Scripture."  Trusting  in  such 
large  part  to  reason,  Donne  naturally  was  suspicious  of  the  mystic's 
dependence  on  direct  revelation  or  illumination.  He  mentioned 
once,  with  condemnation,  two  classes  of  Pharisees,  one  that  on  the 
strength  of  its  own  reason  separates  from  the  church,  the  other 
that  "dreams  of  such  an  union,  such  an  identification  with  God 

**  Song,  p.  18.  °  First  Anniversary,  p.  244. 


26       Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

in  this  life,  as  that  he  understands  all  things,  not  by  the  benefit 
of  the  senses,  and  impressions  in  the  fancy  and  imagination,  or 
by  discourse  and  ratiocination,  as  we  poor  souls  do,  but  by  imme- 
diate and  continual  infusions  and  inspirations  from  God  him- 
self.W4a  On  either  count  the  mystics  were  open  to  censure;  for 
many  of  them  showed  little  regard  for  Christian  institutions  and 
followed  largely  their  own  spiritual  guidance.  Donne  would  not 
atrophy  man's  undisputed  prerogative,  reason,  for  such  accidental 
gifts  as  these. 

Several  of  Donne's  sermons,  nevertheless,  prove  that  the  crucial 
experience  of  Paul's  life  exerted  a  peculiar  fascination  over  him. 
He  would  still  insist  that  "man  hath  a  natural  way  to  come  to 
God,  by  the  eye,  by  the  creature;  so  visible  things  show  the 
invisible  God."  But  he  also  believed  that  "  God  hath  superinduced 
a  supernatural  way,  by  the  ear.  .  .  .  God  shut  up  the  natural  way 
in  Saul,  seeing;  he  struck  him  blind;  but  he  opened  the  super- 
natural way,  he  enabled  him  to  hear,  and  to  hear  him."  4S  Early 
mystics  had  slighted  the  former  way  of  seeing  God,  the  natural, 
to  stress  the  latter,  the  supernatural.  In  the  Theologia  Germanica, 
for  example,  the  soul  is  said  to  have  two  eyes,  one  for  this  world 
of  time  and  place,  the  other  for  eternity.  "  But  these  two  eyes  of 
the  soul/'  the  old  churchman  continues,  "cannot  both  perform 
their  office  at  once;  if  the  soul  would  look  with  the  right  eye  into 
eternity,  the  left  eye  must  be  shut."  44  After  the  ^Reformation, 
however,  mysticism  more  often  taught  that  the  truest  apprehension 
of  God  comes  from  the  harmonious  operation  of  all  our  faculties.4' 
This  sane  and  practical  view  prevails  in  Donne's  sermon. 

Deeply  versed  as  he  was  in  all  theology,  Donne  might  have  given, 
in  either  prose  or  verse,  a  full  statement  of  the  mystic's  faith.  Its 
whole  essence  is  embraced  in  the  declaration  of  his  Valediction, 
"All  divinity  is  love  or  wonder."  But  Donne  went  no  farther. 
Of  the  English  authors  who  were  naturally  inclined  to  this  view, 
only  John  Norris  and  the  group  of  Cambridge  Platonists,  especially 
Henry  More,  were  metaphysicians.  Hence  the  task  that  Donne 
might  have  shouldered  was  left  chiefly  to  More. 

At  first  sight,  the  Cambridge  Platonists  would  hardly  be  sus- 

*  Sermon  47,  vol.  2,  pp.  371-372. 

•Sermon  44,  vol.  2,  p.  310.  «• P.  201. 

*  W.  E.  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism,  p.  299. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  27 

pected  of  being  mystics  at  all.  Theirs  was  a  compromising  party  in 
the  church,  midway  between  the  dogmatism  of  the  Calvinists,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  high-church  tendencies  of  Laud,  on  the 
other.46  Owing  to  a  natural  alignment  with  the  Puritan  tempera- 
ment, they  turned  from  the  questions  of  ecclesiastical  organization 
that  had  engrossed  the  attention  of  churchmen,  to  consider  deeper 
problems,  such  as  the  nature  of  religion,  the  relation  of  reason  to 
faith,  and  the  recognizability  of  religious  truth.47  They  regarded 
religion  as  a  temper  of  mind  in  which  all  of  man's  faculties  work 
together  in  cooperation.  Hence  they  confided  much  to  reason, 
which  appears  to  be  the  most  distinctive  human  faculty,  and  denied 
its  seeming  hostility  to  faith.  In  short,  religion,  as  they  under- 
stood it,  was  neither  belief  nor  conduct,  but  the  man  himself.48 

Benjamin  Whichcote,  therefore,  the  leader  of  these  liberal 
theologians,  aimed  to  create  at  Cambridge  "  a  spirit  of  sober  piety 
and  rational  religion,"  and  to  establish  the  Christian  belief  on 
"  some  rational  principle  of  certitude."  49  "  We  cannot  ascend," 
he  declared,  "higher  in  our  acting  than  we  are  in  our  Beings  and 
Understanding."  B0  On  such  a  foundation  religion  loses  its  dogma- 
tism. But  Whichcote  also  slighted  the  mystical  tendencies  of 
churchmen.  In  his  Sunday  afternoon  lectures  he  taught  not  only 
that  "they  do  not  advance  Eeligion  who  draw  it  down  to  bodily 
acts,"  but  also  that  those  do  not  further  it  "who  carry  it  np 
highest,  into  what  is  mystical,  symbolical,  emblematical."  For,  he 
asserted,  the  "  Christian  Keligion  is  not  mystical,  symbolical,  enig- 
matical, emblematical;  but  uncloathed,  unbodied,  intellectual, 
rational,  spiritual."  B1  Here  Whichcote,  like  Bonne  in  the  passage 
fecently  quoted,  implies  a  condemnation  of  Catholic"  mysticism. 
One  might  judge  him  to  have  been  altogether  rationalistic.  In 
general,  however,  English  men  of  letters,  even  the  most  mystical, 
held  a  sane,  practical  faith  like  this. 

Whichcote  was  not  the  only  Cambridge  philosopher  who  harmon- 
ized these  apparently  opposed  faculties  of  reason  and  faith.  John 
Smith,  for  example,  placed  his  trust  on  reason  as  a  way  to  God. 

*  J.  Tulloch,  Rational  Theology,  1,  chaps.  1,  2. 

"Hid.,  2,  p.  10. 

48  E.  T.  Campagnac,  Cambridge  Platonists,  p.  xv. 

"Ibid.,  p.  24. 

80  Ibid.,  p.  xxxi.  M  Ibid.,  p.  xvi. 


Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

whereas  many  mystics  emphasize  the  weakness  and  futility  of  our 
understanding.  The  Cambridge  Platonists,  like  Donne,  took  the 
other  view,  in  the  belief  that  reason,  as  one  of  our  God-given 
faculties,  cannot  be  a  stumbling  block.  Nathaniel  Culverwell 
therefore  said  of  faith  and  reason :  "  There  is  a  twin-light  spring- 
ing from  both,  and  they  both  spring  from  the  same  Fountain  of 
light."  B2  Beside  this  may  be  placed  John  Smith's  statement : 
"Truth  needs  not  at  any  time  fly  from  reason,  there  being  an 
eternal  amity  between  them."  Hence  he  accepted  as  valid  both 
reason  and  intuition.  As  all  higher  knowledge  of  God,  Smith 
taught,  springs,  from  the  soul,  not  the  senses,  so  there  is  a  power 
within  us  answering  to  the  infinite  power  without  us.  If  this  be 
true,  he  was  convinced  that  "Divine  truth  is  better  understood, 
as  it  unfolds  itself  in  the  purity  of  men's  hearts  and  lives,  than 
in  all  those  subtle  niceties  into  which  curious  wits  may  lay  it 
forth."  In  another  discourse  Smith  ventured  the  opinion  that, 
"  the  common  notions  of  God  and  virtue  impressed  upon  the  souls 
of  men  are  more' clear  and  perspicuous  than  any  else."  G3  All  this 
shows  clearly  that  Smith,  like  the  mystics,  believed  that  higher 
knowledge  comes  not  from  the  senses  but  from  a  power  in  the 
soul  responsive  to  a  higher  power  without  us.  This  power  in  the 
soul  is  in  part  reason  and  in  part  an  impulse  that  can  be  known 
only  in  its  manifestations.  Man,  would  he  learn  the  truth,  must 
use  them  all. 

On  these  matters  Henry  More  worked  in  perfect  accord  with  the 
other  Cambridge  Platonists.  He  defined  religion  as  "the  conse- 
cration and  perfection  of  the  natural  life,"  and  believed  true 
holiness  to  be  "  the  only  safe  entrance  into  divine  knowledge  "  and 
reason  "  in  some  sort  to  be  in  God  himself."  •*  But  from  boyhood 
More  had  been  trained  in  literature  as  well  as  in  theology.  Writing 
to  his  father  the  young  author  said :  "  You  deserve  the  Patronage 
of  better  Poems  than  these,  .  .  .  you  having  from  my  childhood 
turned  mine  ears  to  Spensers  rhymes,  entertaining  us  on  winter 
nights,  with  that  incomparable  Peice  of  his,  The  Fairy  Queen,  a 
Poem  as  richly  fraught  with  divine  Morality  as  Phansy."  M  In 

"  Discourse  of  the  Light  of  Nature,  "  The  Porch." 

MSee  J.  Tulloch,  Rational  Theology,  2,  pp.  140,  145,  149. 

14  J.  Tulloch,  2,  pp.  312,  348,  354. 

*  Philosophical  Poems,  "To  his  dear  Father,"  1642. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  29 

later  life,  then,  More  combined  these  two  interests,  but  is  remem- 
bered less  for  his  philosophical  treatises  than  for  his  fantastical 
metaphysical  poems,  Psychozoia,  Psychathanasia,  and  others  like 
them. 

More's  poems  deal  primarily  with  the  problems  of  speculative 
mysticism.  He  identified  the  three  ultimate  principles  of  Plotinus, 
the  Good,  Intellect,  and  Soul,  with  the  three  persons  of  the  Trinity. 
In  all  created  things  he  perceived  the  soul  of  the  universe,  since 
everything  comes  ultimately  through  the  process  of  emanation 
from  the  Good.  He  held  also  that  the  soul  is  immaterial  and 
immortal,  and  adduced  arguments  to  prove  its  preexistence.  All 
these  questions  are  argued  through  with  the  subtlety  of  a  meta- 
physician.86 

But  in  the  poetry  of  this  fantastically  learned  scholar,  the 
simpler  teachings  of  mysticism  also  appear.  The  chief  and  most 
natural  desire  of  the  soul,  which  is  to  see  God,  cannot  be  wholly 
realized.  Nevertheless,  a  partial  apprehension  of  him  is  granted 
us  through  a  certain  divinely  given  inner  sight; 

So  that  its  plain  that  some  kind  of  insight 

Of  Gods  own  being  in  the  soul  doth  dwell 

Though  what  God  is  we  cannot  yet  so  plainly  tell." 

Hence  the  effort  to  describe  God,  More  quaintly  says,  is  like  trying 
to  recall  a  forgotten  name — one  remembers  first  what  it  is  not. 
Yet  God  will  reveal  himself  most  fully  to  that  person  who  "by 
curbing  sense  and  the  self-seeking  life"  will  strive  "to  mortifie 
our  straitned  selves."  Just  such  an  approach  to  God  through  self- 
denial  is  the  doctrine  preached  in  the  Theologia  Germanica  and  the 
De  Imitations  Christi. 

Again,  More  follows  the  usual  teachings  of  the  mystics  in  regard- 
ing love  as  the  motive  force  of  creation.  He  felt  also  that  duly 
illumined  souls  even  in  this  life  may  "  have  their  aboad  in  Christs 
own  body  "  and  there  be  "  eternally  one  with  our  God."  88  These 
thoughts  occur  as  well  in  his  Minor  Poems,  where  More  appears 
rather  a  religious  mystic  than  a  speculative  philosopher.  The 
Philosophers  Devotion,  for  example,  presents  the  old  argument. 

*  See  J.  S.  Harrison,  Platonism  in  English  Poetry,  pp.  170-174,  187-193. 
87  Psychathanasia,  2.  3,  10. 
"  Hid.,  3.  1,  30. 


30       Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

All  things  back  from  whence  they  sprong, 
As  the  thankfull  Elvers  pay 
What  they  borrowed  of  the  Sea. 

Again  such  simple  mysticism  is  found  in  Charitie  and  Eumilitie: 

Farre  have  I  clambred  in  my  mind 
But  nought  so  great  as  love  I  find: 
Deep-searching  wit,  mount-moving  might 
Are  nought  compar'd  to  that  good  spright. 
Life  of  delight  and  soul  of  blisse! 
Sure  source  of  lasting  happinesse! 
Higher  then  Heaven!  lower  then  hell 
What  is  thy  tent?  where  maist  thou  dwell! 

My  mansion  hight  humilitie 
Heavens  vastest  capabilitie. 
The  further  it  doth  downward  tend 
The  higher  up  it  doth  ascend; 
If  it  go  down  to  utmost  nought 
It  shall  return  with  that  it  sought. 

There  is  a  vital  difference,  of  course,  between  More's  handling 
of  tEese  subjects  and  that  of  other  poets.  Wordsworth,  Vaughan, 
and  Traherne  accept  without  question  the  belief  in  the  soul's  pre- 
existence,  where  More  labors  to  expound  it.  Yet  his  ideas  are  the 
same.  The  soul,  he  argued,  is  "  a  precious  drop  sunk  from  JEter- 
nitie."  Here  on  earth,  though,  a  soul  "  uncenters  "  itself ;  for  "  a 
fading  light  we  lead  in  deadly  influence,"  and 

Thus  groping  after  our  own  Centres  near 
'And  proper  Substance,  we  grew  dark,  contract, 
Swallow'd  up  of  earthly  life,  ne  what  we  were 
Of  old,  through  ignorance  can  we  detect. 

These  halting  lines  may  recall  some  of  the  finest  passages  of  Words- 
worth's Ode.  Another  such  contrast  may  suggest  itself  to  readers 
of  Vaughan.  In  his  prosy,  bungling  way,  More  compared  the  soul, 
encased  in  the  body,  to  "a  light  fast-lock'd  in  lanthorn  dark/' 
through  which  "  some  weaker  rayes  ...  do  glide,"  until 

When  we've  past  the  perill  of  the  way 

Arriv'd  at  home,  and  laid  that  case  aside, 

The  naked  light  how  clearly  doth  it  ray 

And  spread  its  joyfull  beams  as  bright  as  Summers  day. 

The  same  analogy,  which  he  had  probably  learned  from  Cornelius 
Agrippa,  was  in  Vaughan's  mind  in  the  moment  of  real  vision  that 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  31 

produced  "They  are  all  gone  into  the  world  of  light ";  but  he 
handled  it  with  the  sure  touch  of  an  artist  thus : 

If  a  star  were  confin'd  into  a  tomb 

Her  captive  flames  must  needs  burn  there; 

But  when  the  hand  that  lockt  her  up,  gives  room, 

She'l  shine  through  all  the  sphare. 

However  devoted  to  Plato's  doctrine  this  school  of  Cambridge 
philosophers  may  have  been,  their  influence  on  the  whole  tended 
against  mysticism.  They  were  the  rationalists  in  the  church  of 
their  day,  and  mysticism  has  always  discounted  experience  and 
reason  as  means  to  the  highest  truth.  The  more  usual  attitude, 
then,  of  the  mystics  toward  reason  is  discernible  in  Crashaw^s 
Hymn  of  Saint  Thomas: 

Down,  down,  proud  Sense  1  discourses  dy! 
Keep  close,  my  soul's  inquiring  eyl 
Nor  touch,  nor  tast,  must  look  for  more 
But  each  sitt  still  in  his  own  dore. 

Your  ports  are  all  superfluous  here, 
Saue  that  which  lets  in  Faith,  the  eare. 
Faith  is  my  skill:  Faith  can  beleiue 
As  fast  as  Loue  new  lawes  can  giue. 

The  opposed  viewpoint  of  the  rationalists  is  plainly  given  in 
Samuel  Butler's  Reflections  upon  Reason.  According  to  his  defini- 
tion, reason  is  "a  Faculty  of  the  Mind,  whereby  she  puts  the 
Notions  and  images  of  Things,  with  their  Operations,  Effects,  and 
Circumstances,  that  are  confused  in  the  Understanding,  into  the 
same  Order  and  Condition,  in  which  they  are  really  disposed  by 
Nature,  or  Event/' 89  He  declares,  too,  that  "  Keason  is  the  only 
Helm  of  the  Understanding;  the  Imagination  is  but  the  Soul,  apt 
to  receive,  and  be  carried  away  with  every  "Wind  of  Vanity,  unless 
it  be  steered  by  the  former."  But  teaching  of  this  sort  was  not 
common  before  the  rise  of  the  rationalistic  philosophy  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

Opposed  to  the  cold  logic  of  Butler  are  the  finely  colored  poetic 
meditations  of  the  genial  old  Norwich  physician,  Sir  Thomas 
Browne.  On  all  questions  of  science  he  depended  strictly  on 
observation  and  experiment.  Thus,  for  example,  in  Vulgar  Errors 

*  Genuine  Remains,  vol.  2. 


32        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

he  exposed  the  falsity  of  many  an  old  supersitition ;  even  the  quaint 
popular  ideas  regarding  the  anatomy  of  the  elephant  and  the  dead 
kingfisher's  habits  had  to  go.  In  religion,  however,  Browne  loved 
to  lose  himself  in  an  "  0  altitude,"  firmly  insisting  that  "  this  is 
no  vulgar  part  of  Faith,  to  believe  a  thing  not  only  above  but 
contrary  to  Season,  and  against  the  Arguments  of  our  proper 
Senses/'  Confident  that  "there  be  not  impossibilities  enough  in 
Eeligion  for  an  active  faith/'  he  taught,  as  he  quaintly  says,  his 
"haggard  and  unreclaimed  Reason  to  stoop  unto  the  lure  of 
Faith,"  and  regretted  only  that  he  had  not  lived  before  Christ's 
coming,  with  the  Jews  "  who  upon  obscure  prophesies  and  mystical 
types  could  raise  a  belief,  and  expect  apparent  impossibilities."  60 
Much  the  same  was  the  mental  attitude  of  John  Norris.  Trained 
as  he  was  in  metaphysics  and  the  learning  of  the  schools,  he  would 
be  the  last  to  condemn  knowledge.  Norris  simply  felt,  as  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  felt,  that  the  mind  is  limited  in  its  reach  and 
fails  to  grasp  the  truth  or  even  use  sound  laws  of  reason.  The 
most  that  Norris  can  admit  is: 

Or  grant  some  knowledge  dwells  below, 

Tis  but  for  some  few  years  to  stay 

Till  I'm  set  loose  from  this  dark  house  of  clay, 

And  in  an  instant  I  shall  all  things  know.w 

In  this  fashion  the  sacred  poets  of  the  seventeenth  century,  from 
pedestrian  Quarles  to  the  spiritual  Crashaw  and  Vaughan,  set  the 
bounds  of  human  knowledge.  In  the  words  of  Quarles, 

True,  Faith  and  Reason  are  the  Soule's  two  Eyes: 
Faith  evermore  lookes  upward,  and  discryes 
Objects  remote;  but  Reason  can  discover 
Things  onely  neere;  sees  nothing  that's  above  her." 

Nevertheless,  this  craving  to  know  more  of  life  than  experience 
can  teach  is  natural  in  man.  Hence  the  mystic  is  concerned  not 
simply  with  this  one  great  problem,  the  search  for  God,  but  must 
face  another,  also,  the  question  of  the  validity  of  earthly  knowledge. 
One  is  a  religious  problem ;  the  other  is  epistemological. 
In  general,  however,  English  poets  have  slighted  this  second 

*°  Religio  Medici,  1.  9. 

"See  above,  p.  186,  and  Curiosity  and  Against  Knowledge. 

*  On  Faith  and  Reason.    See  also  On  Raymond  Sebund. 


Elbert  N.  S.  Thompson  33 

problem  that  concerns  the  source  and  validity  of  knowledge  and 
have  turned  their  attention  to  the  religious  problem,  the  search 
for  God.  Apparently,  most  of  them  have  taken  it  for  granted 
that  the  surest  way  to  divine  truth  is  through  secret  spiritual 
channels.  Or,  if  proof  be  desired,  man's  instincts  suffice  to  estab- 
lish the  reality  of  the  spirit's  power.  This  is  Drummond's 
argument : 

Why  did  wee  get  this  high  and  vaste  Desire, 

Vnto  immortal  things  still  to  aspire? 
Why  doth  our  Minde  extend  it  beyond  Time, 

And  to  that  highest  Happinesse  euen  clime? 
If  wee  be  nought  but  what  to  Sense  wee  seeme."  " 

Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brooke,  reasoned  coldly  in  the  same  way: 

For  Knowledge  is  of  Power's  eternity, 
And  perfect  Glory,  the  true  image- taker ; 

So  as  what  doth  the  infinite  containe 

Must  be  as  infinite  as  it  againe.*4 

To  this  one  might  add  these  lines  from  Sir  John  Davies'  poem  on 
immortality : 

So  when  we  God  and  Angels  do  conceive, 

And  think  of  truth,  which  is  eternal  too; 

Then  do  our  Minds  immortal  Forms  receive, 

Which  if  they  mortal  were,  they  could  not  do.** 

The  argument  was  so  common  that  even  a  person  so  unmystical 
as  Lord  Herbert  advanced  it.  "  Since  my  coming  into  this  world," 
he  noted  in  his  autobiography,  "  my  soul  hath  formed  or  produced 
certain  faculties  which  are  almost  as  useless  for  this  life  as  the 
above  named  senses  were  for  the  mother's  womb/'  His  conclusion 
is  that  "the  proper  objects  of  these  faculties,  therefore,  though 
framed,  or  at  least  appearing  in  this  world,  is  God  only."  68 

Such  thinkers  accepted  without  solution,  or  even  failed  to  see, 
the  epistemological  problem  confronting  mysticism,  and  turned  to 
a  search  for  God.  To  express  concretely  this  search,  they  used 
commonly  one  of  three  symbols,  speaking  of  a  journey  whose  end 
is  the  beatific  vision,  or  of  a  burning  love  between  the  individual 

M  "  It  Autumn  Was."  M  Of  Humane  Learning,  3. 

M  Nosce  Teipsum,  ed.  1733,  p.  80. 
"Pp.  21-22.    See  too,  above,  p.  182. 


3^        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

and  God,  or  of  an  inward,  spiritual  change  that  discloses  the  end 
sought  in  one's  own  heart.87 

The  symbol  of  love  was  employed  most  powerfully  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  by  Francis  Thompson  in  The  Hound  of  Heaven 
and  by  Coventry  Patmore  in  the  Odes.  Protestant  poets  of  the 
seventeenth  century  adopted  the  imagery  of  love  less  frequently, 
for  they,  like  their  followers,  have  found  it  repellant.  Nevertheless, 
Francis  Quarlee  in  his  many  emblems  based  on  portions  of  the 
Canticles  did  not  shrink  from  this  symbolism.  One  beautiful  poem, 
for  example,  expands  on  the  text,  "  My  beloved  is  mine,  and  I  am 
his :  he  feedeth  among  the  lillies."  But  this  piece  is  exceptional  for 
its  chastened  use  of  this  questionable  imagery,  and  elsewhere  the 
poet  oversteps  the  bounds  of  good  taste.  Two  early  Catholic  writ- 
ers, furthermore,  made  use  of  this  symbol  without  "hesitancy. 

Love,  thou  art  Absolute  sole  Lord 
Of  Life  and  Death, 

Crashaw  exclaims  at  the  opening  of  possibily  his  finest  poem.  In 
another  he  offers  himself  this  consolation: 

Dear  Soul,  be  strong! 

Mercy  will  come  e're  long 
And  bring  his  bosome  fraught  with  blessings, 
Flowers  of  never-fading  graces 
To  make  immortall  dressings 
For  worthy  soules,  whose  wise  embraces 
Store  up  themselves  for  Him,  Who  is  alone 
The  Spouse  of  virgins  and  the  virgin's  Son." 

With  the  same  kind  of  symbolism  Southwell  likens  Christ's  eyes 
to  sweet  volumes,  nectared  ambrys,  soul-feeding  meats,  and  quivers 
of  love-darts.69  To  the  ordinary  reader  such  language  is  repulsive, 
even  though  the  poef  s  justification  is  The  Song  of  Songs,  and 
Protestant  writers  as  a  rule  avoided  it.70 

The  second  symbol,  a  journey  from  this  life  to  another,  was 
more  common  in  the  true  literature  of  the  time.  Yet  even  this 
occurs  more  frequently  in  the  widely  read  books  of  piety  that 
hardly  belong  to  belles  lettres  at  all.  In  these  books  the  figure  of 
a  journey  would  be  used  because  it  finds  justification  in  many 

*  E.  Underbill,  Mysticism,  p.  153. 

*  Prayer.  m  Bt.  Peter's  Complaint. 

w  Reference,  though,  should  be  mlade  to  the  work  of  Christopher  Harvey. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  35 

Biblical  phrases,  and  because  of  its  nearness  to  daily  life.  Hence 
one  finds  titles  like  these:  The  Scala  Perfectionis,  The  Plain 
Man's  Pathway  to  Heaven,  which  was  especially  dear  to  Bunyan, 
The  Pilgrimage  of  Man,  the  Pilgrimage  to  Paradise,  and  The  Way 
to  the  Celestial  Paradise.  Infinitely  higher  in  literary  value  than 
these  forgotten  books  of  piety  is  George  Herbert's  The  Pilgrimage. 
The  poet  travels  toward  the  distant  hill,  "  where  lay  my  expecta- 
tion," past  "the  gloomy  cave  of  Desperation/'  past  "phansie's 
medow,"  "  care's  cops/'  and  "  the  wilde  of  passion."  He  finds  on 
the  hill,  when  he  has  scaled  it,  nought  but  "a  lake  of  brackish 
waters,"  and  realises  that  only  death  can  bring  him  to  his  goal. 
But  even  this  poem  is  dwarfed  in  significance  before  the  greatest 
exemplar  of  the  type,  Pilgrim's  Progress.  In  Bunyan's  story  the 
reader  follows  the  steps  of  Christian  from  the  City  of  Destruc- 
tion to  the  City  of  Zion,  as  he  passes  by  the  brick  walls  and  hedges 
along  the  way,  toils  laboriously  through  the  sloughs,  catches 
glimpses  of  distant  hills  or  valleys,  and  steps  aside  over  stiles  into 
bypaths.  These  are  the  highways  and  the  lanes  of  Puritan  Eng- 
land, which  are  used  to  symbolize  the  experiences  of  a  Christian 
along  the  pathway  of  life.  At  the  end,  the  glorious  vision  of  the 
Holy  City  appears,  which  brought  true  satisfaction  to  the  mystic's 
desires. 

Less  literally  than  Bunyan  the  poets  utilized  the  symbol  of  a 
journey.  In  one  sense,  God  and  the  ideal  world  may  be  remote; 
but  in  another  sense  they  are  very  near ;  for  in  our  own  hearts  are 
found  the  movings  of  the  divine  spirit,  and  in  nature,  the  surest 
glimpses  of  the  other  world. 

In  us,  not  of  us,  a  spirit  not  of  Earth, 
Fashioning  the  mortall  to  immortal  birth, 

wrote  Fulke  Greville.71  And  of  the  world  he  lived  in  John  Norris 
said: 

The  sweets  of  Nature  shall  not  stay 

My  soul,  but  only  shew  to  thee  the  way; 

To  thee!    Thou  beauty's  great  original." 

This  union  of  the  divine  and  the  human,  of  the  remote  with  the 
near,  was  made  easy  for  the  Christian  through  the  intermediary 
offices  held  by  Christ  and  the  Holy  Spirit.  Accordingly,  God 

w  Of  Religion,  3.  ™  The  Invitation. 


36        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

seemed  to  these  poets  very  near,  immanent  both  in  the  human 
heart  and  in  nature,  so  that  only  a  spiritual  change  need  be  ef- 
fected to  reveal  him  here.  Therefore,  the  symbol  of  a  journey  is 
often  combined  with  the  third  mystical  symbol,  that  of  growth  or 
transfiguration. 

Such  a  combination  is  often  found  in  the  poems  of  Henry 
Vaughan;  for  no  one  had  a  greater  fervor  than  he  to  seek  God 
or  a  keener  realization  of  the  divine  in  ordinary  life.  The  Search, 
whose  very  title  is  significant  in  this  connection,  begins : 

Tie  now  cleaxe  day:  I  see  a  Rose 
Bud  in  the  bright  East,  and  disclose 
The  Pilgrim-Sunne ;  all  night  have  I 
Spent  in  a  roving  Extasie 
To  find  my  Saviour. 

In  this  spirit  he  searches,  but  in  vain,  for  God.  Then  the  inner 
voice  of  the  mystics  speaks  to  him: 

Leave,  leave  thy  gadding  thoughts; 
Who  Pores 
And  spies 
Still  out  of  Doores 

descries 
Within  them  nought. 

The  only  obvious  conclusion  is  that  God  must  be  found  here  if  at 
all.  Nevertheless,  the  poem  ends  unexpectedly: 

Search  well  another  world;  who  studies  this, 
Travels  in  Clouds,  seeks  Manna,  where  none  is. 

This  idea,  so  frequently  recurring  in  Vaughan's  poetry,  is  finely 
expressed  in  the  words,  "  run  on,  and  reach  home  with  the  light." 
If  this  seems  to  be  an  implicit  acceptance  of  the  symbol  of  a 
journey,  another  memorable  phrase,  "fill  thy  brest  with  home/* 
suggests  instead  that  only  a  spiritual  transformation,  and  no  long 
search,  is  necessary  to  restore  the  innocence  of  the  first  creation, 
when 

Angels  lay  Leiger  here;  Each  Bush  and  Gel, 
Each  Oke  and  high-way  knew  them." 

This  belief  in  the  immanence  of  God  can  be  traced  alike  to  the  New 
Testament  and  to  Neo-Platonism.  From  the  sixth  Ennead  of 

TI  Corruption,  p.  440.  See  too,  Herbert's  Miserie,  and  Joseph's  Beau- 
mont's The  Pilgrim  and  House  and  Home. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  37 

Plotinus  came  such  thoughts  as  these :  "  God  is  not  external  to  any 
one,  but  is  present  in  all  things,  though  they  are  ignorant  that  he 
is  so ;"  "  God  is  not  in  a  certain  place,  but  wherever  anything  is 
able  to  come  into  contact  with  him  there  he  is  present ;"  and,  "  a 
soul  that  knows  itself  must  know  that  the  proper  direction  of  its 
energy  is  not  outwards  in  a  straight  line,  but  round  a  center  which 
is  within  it."  Yet  it  was  less  easy  for  Plotinus  than  for  the  Chris- 
tian, with  his  faith  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  to  bring  heaven 
to  earth,  and  all  through  our  sacred  literature  there  appears  this 
belief  that  God  may  be  found  in  our  own  hearts. 

In  this  sense  the  title  of  Christopher  Harvey's  volume,  The 
School  of  the  Heart,  is  to  be  understood.  One  of  the  lyrics  of  his 
earlier  collection,  The  Synagogue,  begins, 

Life  is  a  journey.    From  our  mothers'  wombs, 
As  houses,  we  set  out;  and  in  our  tombs, 
As  inns  we  rest,  till  it  be  time  to  rise.'4 

But  the  later  poems  lay  emphasis  on  spiritual  culture,  rather  than 
a  change  of  abode.  Speaking  of  the  heart,  the  poet  says : 

Thou,  Thou  canst  soften, 
Lighten,  enliven,  purifie,  restore, 
And  make  more  fruitfull  then  it  was  before 
Its  hardnesse,  darkenesse,  death,  uncleannesse,  losse, 
And  barrenesse;  refine  it  from  the  drosse, 
And  draw  out  all  the  dregs;  heal  ev'ry  sore; 
Teach  it  to  know  it  selfe,  aipd  love  Thee  more. 

Hence  the  poems  that  follow  this  introduction  are  filled  with 
thoughts  familiar  to  the  mystics,  and,  although  Harvey  seldom 
rises  higher  than  the  position  he  modestly  claimed  for  himself  as 
the  disciple  of  George  Herbert  and  Quarles,  much  in  his  poetry  is 
truly  significant. 

My  worldly  bus'nesse  shall  be  still, 

That  heav'nly  thoughts  my  mind  may  fill, 

he  resolves,  admitting 

Of  itself  mine  heart  is  dark; 

But  Thy  fire,  by  shining  bright, 
Fills  it  full  of  saving  light. 

To  this  inspiration  he  therefore  would  trust  and  would  have  reason 


M  The  Journey. 


38        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

"  her  scepter  quite  resign."  Possibly  the  keynote  of  all  these  lyrics 
is  nothing  more  than  these  time-worn  sentiments: 

Move  me  no  more,  mad  world,  it  is  in  vaine, 
and 

(Why  should  I  not  ascend, 
And  climbe  up  where  I  may  mend 
My  meane  estate  of  misery  ?  '* 

A  love  for  nature  and  a  feeling  of  kinship  with  all  its  parts 
were  consequently  natural  to  the  mystics.  With  all  of  Words- 
worth's sympathy,  Crashaw  mentioned  the  rose,  the  violet,  and 
"the  poor  panting  turtle-dove."  Yet  his  all-absorbing  religious 
passion  raised  his  thoughts  as  a  rule  above  such  things.  John 
Norris,  also,  although  he  saw  in  nature  one  of  the  most  direct 
manifestations  of  God,  was  too  intellectual  to  be  engrossed  in  it.  The 
majority  of  poets,  however,  remained  satisfied  with  such  revelations 
of  God  as  natural  objects  have  to  offer.  "Indeed  what  are  the 
Heavens,  the  earth,  nay,  every  creature  but  Hieroglyphics  and 
Emblems  of  his  glory  ?  "  76  This  question  from  Quarles  surprises 
the  reader  more  than  it  would  have  done  from  John  Smith,  with 
his  finer  temperament.  Smith  seems  but  to  express  himself  in 
saying: 

God  made  the  universe  and  all  the  creatures  contained  therein  as  so 
many  glasses  wherein  He  might  reflect  his  glory.  He  hath  copied  forth 
Himself  in  the  creation;  and  in  this  outward  world  we  may  read  the 
lovely  characters  of  the  Divine  goodness,  power,  and  wisdom  .  .  .  Thus 
may  a  man  walk  up  and  down  the  world  as  in  a  garden  of  spices,  and 
suck  a  Divine  sweetness  out  of  every  flower.  .  .  .  True  religion  never  finds 
itself  out  of  the  infinite  sphere  of  the  Divinity." 

Thus  in  general  the  mystical  poets  were  content  to  read  God  in 
nature  and  the  human  heart.  Like  Plato,  they  would  enjoy  the 
beauties  of  this  world,  as  a  means  of  apprehending  the  greater 
radiance  of  another.  And  with  Coventry  Patmore,  they  would  say : 

The  much  abused  earth  is  the  "  main  f  egion  "  of  the  Poet  and  not  the 
inscrutable  heavens,  though  unless  his  eye  be  habitually  turned  to  those 
heavens,  the  earth  remains  as  inscrutable  as  themselves." 


n  See  pp.  109,  192,  203,  207,  220  and  205  of  Grosart's  edition. 

*  Emblems,  "  To  the  Reader." 

n  W.  R.  Inge,  Christian  Mysticism,  pp.  295-296. 

™  Basil  Champney,  Coventry  Patmore,  1,  p.  258.    This  passage,  also,  from 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  39 

Vaughan  was  the  greatest  of  the  nature  mystics  of  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Dawn,  "with  its  all-surprising  light/'  sober 
evening,  the  "  unthrif t  Sun/'  the  azure  heavens,  the  fountains  and 
banks  of  flowers,  "  some  fast  asleep,  others  broad-eyed/'  the  oaks 
and  gilded  clouds  and  God's  "host  of  spyes/'  the  stars,  all  these 
spoke  to  Vaughan  the  deepest  truths.  Together  they  offered  one 
grand  symphony  of  praise ; 

In  what  Rings, 
And  Hymning  Circulations  the  quick  world 

Awakes,  and  sings! 

The  rising  winds, 

And  falling  springs, 

Birds,  beasts,  all  things 
Adore  him  in  their  kinds." 

Nature,  therefore,  had  lessons  for  him  as  it  had  for  Wordsworth. 
This  power  is  recognized  in  The  Tempest: 

O  that  man  could  do  so!  that  he  would  hear 
The  world  read  to  him !  all  the  vast  expence 
In  the  Creation  shed,  and  slav'd  to  sence 
Makes  up  but  lectures  for  his  eie,  and  ear. 

Sure,  mighty  love,  foreseeing  the  discent 
Of  this  poor  Creature,  by  a  gracious  art 
Hid  in  these  low  things  snares  to  gain  his  heart, 

And  laid  surprizes  in  each  Element. 

All  things  here  shew  him  heaven;  Waters  that  fall, 
Chide,  and  fly  up;  Mists  of  corruptest  fome 
Quit  their  first  beds  &  mount;  trees,  herbs,  flowres,  all 

Strive  upwards  stil,  and  point  him  the  way  home. 

Firmly  convinced  of  the  potent  spirituality  of  all  nature,  Vaughan 
at  times  is  seized  with  a  longing  like  Shelley's  in  the  West  Wind, 
and  exclaims: 

one  of  Norris's  Practical  Discourses,  ed.  1707,  p.  203,  might  be  quoted: 
God  speaks  to  man  "within,  and  he  speaks  to  him  without:  Within  by 
the  Dictates  of  Reason,  by  the  Light  of  inward  Truth,  and  by  the  secret 
whispers  of  his  spirit:  Without,  by  the  visible  Frame  and  Order  of  the 
Creation,  wherein  not  only  the  Heavens  declare  the  Glory  of  God,  and  the 
Firmament  shews  his  Handy- Work,  but  even  the  meanest  Insect  reads  him 
a  Lecture  of  Divinity,  and  Preaches  to  him  a  Sermon  of  Adoration  and 
Devotion." 

"  The  Morning  Watch,  p.  424. 


Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

I  would  I  were  some  Bird,  or  Star, 
Fluttering  in  woods,  or  lifted  far 

Above  this  Inne 

And  Bode  of  sin! 

Then  either  Star,  or  Bird,  should  be 
Shining  or  singing  still  to  thee.80 

At  other  times  he  felt,  like  Arnold,  Nature's  calming  power : 

I  would  (said  I)  my  God  would  give 
The  staidness  of  these  things  to  man!  for  these 
To  his  divine  appointments  ever  cleave, 

And  no  new  business  breaks  their  peace.*1 

The  world,  as  Vaughan  read  it,  was  both  his  solace  and  his 
inspiration. 

As  Henry  Vaughan  found  God  everywhere  in  Nature,  so  his 
great  fellow  mystic,  Thomas  Traherne,  found  the  divine  by  intro- 
version in  the  human  heart.  In  passing  into  his  consciousness, 
nature  seemed  to  resolve  itself  into  something  purely  unsubstantial, 
and  he  saw  the  world  with  inward  eyes.  More  implicitly  than  any 
of  his  fellow  poets,  this  quiet,  ascetic  churchman  followed  the 
prescription  of  Hugo  of  St.  Victor :  "  The  way  to  ascend  to  God 
is  to  descend  into  oneself  ."  82 

The  peculiar  trend  of  Traherne's  mind,  then,  was  for  introspec- 
tion. No  other  poet  felt  as  strongly  as  he  the  preeminence  of  the 
spirit;  indeed,  for  him,  spirit  was  altogether  disassociated  from 
body.  The  soul  is  in  the  body,  for  the  time  being,  but  not  confined 
within  its  narrow  walls;  it  "is  a  sphere  not  shut  up  here,  but 
everywhere/'  So  his  mind  ranges  where  it  will.  In  thought  all 
times  are  present  and  all  places  near  to  him;  for"" thoughts  are 
always  free."  They  are  the  bond  between  man  and  God;  and, 
since  "by  thoughts  alone  the  soul  is  made  divine,"  the  mind  "is 
the  only  being  that  doth  live."  M 

Traherne  carried  this  trust  in  the  supremacy  of  the  spirit  so  far 
that  he  denied  the  reality  of  the  objective  world  as  plainly  as 
Berkeley  or  any  of  the  later  idealists.  No  other  implication  can 
be  assigned  to  this  stanza  from  My  Spirit: 

81  Christ's  Nativity,  p.  442. 
81  Man,  p.  477.    See  above,  pp.  190-191. 

MW.   R.  Inge,   Christian   Mysticism,  p.   141.     Cf.  Joseph  Beaumont's 
beautiful  lyric,  House  and  Somie. 
M  My  Spirit,  p.  42,  and  Thoughts,  pp.  107,  116. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  4l 

This  made  me  present  evermore 

With  whatsoe'er  I  saw. 
An  object,  if  it  were  before 
iMy  eye,  was  by  Dame  Nature's  law, 

Within  my  soul.    Her  store 
Was  all  at  once  within  me;  all  Her  treasures 
Were  my  immediate  and  internal  pleasures, 
Substantial  joys,  which  did  inform  my  mind. 
With  all  she  wrought 
My  soul  was  fraught, 
And  every  object  in  my  heart  a  thought 
Begot,  or  was;  I  could  not  tell, 
Whether  the  things  did  there 

Themselves  appear, 

Which  in  my  Spirit  truly  seem'd  to  dwell; 
Or  whether  my  conforming  mind 
Were  not  even  all  that  therein  shin'd. 

One  need  not  wonder,  therefore,  at  the  unreality  of  Traherne's 
pictures  of  the  material  world.  It  existed  for  him  subjectively, 
not  objectively,  and  it  was  interesting  and  significant  not  in  itself, 
but  as  a  symbol  or  revelation  of  something  higher.  This  was  the 
view  of  Coleridge  and  the  German  Transcendentalists,  who  doubt- 
less would  gladly  subscribe  to  Traherne's  belief  that 

All  objects  are 

Alive  in  Thee!  supersubstantial,  rare, 

Above  themselves,  and  nigh  of  kin 

To  those  pure  things  we  find 

In  His  great  mind 
Who  made  the  world! 

The  result  of  this  absorption  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  was  an 
extremely  self-centered  religion.  In  his  regard,  the  world  was 
created  expressly  for  him; 

Long  time  before 
1  in  my  mother's  womb  was  born, 
A  God  preparing  did  this  glorious  store, 
The  world  for  me  adorn.** 

God,  indeed,  showed  his  highest  power  and  wisdom  not  so  much  in 
creating  the  world  as  in  bringing  it  to  Traherne  to  enjoy ;  for 

Neither  goodness,  wisdom,  power,  nor  love, 
Nor  happiness  itself  in  things  could  be, 


The  Salutation,  p.  3. 


42         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

Did  they  not  all  in  one  fair  order  move 

And  jointly  by  their  service  end  in  me: 
Had  He  not  made  an  eye  to  be  the  Sphere 
Of  all  things,  none  of  these  would  e'er  appear." 

From  this  reasoning  the  only  rational  deduction  is  that  which 
Hegel  later  made,  that  God  was  only  perfected  in  the  creation. 
Nor  did  Traherne,  like  Drummond,  shrink  from  this  assumption. 

And  what  than  this  can  be  more  plain  and  clear? 
What  truth  than  this  more  evident  appear? 
The  Godhead  cannot  prize 

The  sun  at  all,  nor  yet  the  skies, 

;Or  air,  or  earth,  or  trees,  or  seas, 
Or  stars,  unless  the  soul  of  man  they  please.*" 
No  joy,  no,  nor  Perfection  to  thee  came 
By  the  contriving  of  this  World's  great  Frame. 

And  with  even  greater  daring  in  The  Recovery  Traherne  declares, 
"  In  us  He  reigns." 

A  second  outcome  of  this  mental  attitude  was  the  trust  placed 
by  Traherne  in  contemplation.  Even  in  childhood  he  had  proved 
its  fruitfulness,  when 

A  meditating,  inward  eye 
Gazing  at  quiet  did  within  me  lie, 

And  every  thing 
Delighted  me  that  was  their  heavenly  King.8" 

Dumbness  has  the  same  story  to  record : 

Sure  Man  was  born  to  njeditate  on  things, 
And  to  contemplate  the  eternal  springs 
Of  God  and  Nature,  glory,  bliss,  and  pleasure; 
That  life  and  love  might  be  his  Heavenly  treasure; 
And  therefore  speechless  made  at  first,  that  He 
Might  in  himself  profoundly  busied  be. 

Nor  would  Traherne  limit  the  fruitfulness  of  quiet  thought  to 
childhood;  for  he  felt  assured  that 

M  The  Improvement,  p.  26. 

M  The  Demonstration,  p.  85.  Cf .  Master  Eckhard :  "  God  without  them 
(the  creatures)  would  not  be  God."  Light,  Life,  and  Love,  pp.  xx-xxii. 
Drummond's  Hymn  to  the  Fairest  Fair  expresses  the  other  view: 

"  The  Preparative,  p.  16. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  43 


A  man  that  seemeth  idle  to  the  view 
Of  others,  may  the  greatest  business  do, 

and  that 

A  quiet  silent  person  may  possess 

All  that  is  great  or  high  in  Blessedness. 

The  inward  work  is  the  supreme.88 

How  similar  this  is  to  the  thought  of  Expostulation  and  Reply. 
But  Traherne's  poems  lack  the  touch  of  reality  that  Wordsworth's 
possess.  Even  if  we  could  unite  Vaughan  with  Traherne  we 
should  not  have  the  full  counterpart  of  the  poet  who  combined  in 
so  high  a  degree  both  realism  and  idealism. 

If  one  may  judge  from  his  own  testimony,  Traherne  at  least 
occasionally  lost  himself  completely  in  the  mystic's  reverie  that 
Wordsworth  describes  in  T intern  Abbey: 

That  serene  and  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on, — 
Until,  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame 
And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 
Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul. 

To  such  a  state  as  this  Traherne  refers  in  Meditations.  "  Some- 
times/' he  says,  "  I  should  be  alone,  and  without  employment,  when 
suddenly  my  Soul  would  return  to  itself,  and  forgetting  all  things 
in  the  whole  world  which  mine  eyes  had  seen,  would  be  carried 
away  to  the  ends  of  the  earth."  89  At  such  times,  truths  were 
apprehended  that  are  ordinarily  lost  to  consciousness  or  only 
imperfectly  conceived.  Of  the  certainty  of  such  intuitive  knowl- 
edge he  speaks  in  Demonstration: 

The  highest  things  are  easiest  to  be  shewn, 
And  only  capable  of  being  known. 

A  mist  involves  the  eye 

(While  in  the  middle  it  doth  live; 
And  till  the  ends  of  things  are  seen 
The  way's  uncertain  that  doth  stand  between. 

As  in  the  air  we  see  the  clouds 

Like  winding  sheets  or  shrouds, 
(Which,  though  they  nearer  are,  obscure 
The  sun,  which,  higher  far,  is  far  more  pure. 


'Silence,  p.  38.  "Meditations,  3.  17. 


44         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

More  plainly  in  Traherne  and  Vaughan  than  in  other  poets, 
one  finds  the  conviction  that  man  is  but  a  portion  of  the  divine, 
and  that  God  is  very  near.  Pietistic  writers  might  describe  life 
as  a  journey  toward  a  distant  goal;  but  poets  saw  God  in  nature 
and  the  human  heart.  Traherne,  for  example,  asked  in  Amend- 
ment: 

Am  I  a  glorious  spring 
Of  joys  and  riches  to  my  King? 
Are  men  made  Gods  ?    And  may  they  see 
So  wonderful  a  thing 

As  God  in  me? 

And  is  my  soul  a  mirror  that  must  ehine 
Even  like  the  sun  and  be  far  more  divine? 

By  the  poets  under  consideration  no  idea  is  given  of  the  slow 
and  painful  progress  by  which  the  mystic  achieved  his  vision  of 
the  divine.  Most  of  them  rest  satisfied  with  this  divinely  illumined 
world  of  self  and  seldom  press  on  to  a  more  complete  sight  of  God. 
Dante's  dearly  bought  consciousness  of  the  nature  of  sin,  his  slow 
and  toilsome  regeneration,  his  radiant  vision  of  God,  altogether 
transcended  the  powers  of  other  poets.  The  less  literary  mystics 
make  a  good  deal  of  the  slow  growth  to  the  achievement  of  their 
life's  purpose,  the  vision  of  God.  Dean  Inge  has  divided  their 
progress  into  these  three  stages:  the  purgative  life;  the  illuminative 
life,  when  all  our  faculties,  will,  intellect,  and  feeling,  are  concen- 
trated on  God;  and  the  intuitive  life,  whose  motive  force  is  con- 
templation.90 Delacroix  marks  this  fourfold  division :  a  period  of 
unrest;  a  period,  begun  abruptly,  in  which  vision  succeeds 
passivity;  a  period  of  sadness  and  depression;  and,  finally,  a  state 
of  permanent  peace  and  quiet.91  And  Miss  TInderhill  traces  the 
mystic's  growth  more  technically  through  the  awakening  of  self, 
the  purgation,  and  the  illumination  of  self,  to  the  soul's  dark  night 
and  the  final  unitive  experience  that  brings  not  simply  a  sight  of 
God  but  the  closest  identification  with  him.92 

Of  the  slow  and  laborious  progress  along  the  mystic  way,  John 
Bunyan  has  left  two  interesting  records.  His  personal  experience, 
given  in  Grace  Abounding,  can  be  broken  into  the  four  stages 
marked  out  by  Delacroix.  He  was  troubled  grievously  at  first  with 

90  Christian  Mysticism,  p.  10. 

91  Etudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  Mysticisme,  p.  348. 
91  Mysticism,  pp.  205  ff. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  45 

the  consciousness  of  his  sins.  "  These  things,  I  say,  when  I  was 
but  a  child,  but  nine  or  ten  years  old,  did  so  distress  my  Soul,  that 
there  in  the  midst  of  my  many  Sports  and  Childish  Vanities,  amidst 
my  vain  Companions,  I  was  often  much  cast  down  and  afflicted  in 
my  Mind  therewith,  yet  could  I  not  let  go  my  sins."  Then  came 
the  sudden  awakening  on  the  village  green,  when  the  voice  from 
heaven  asked,  "  Wilt  thou  leave  thy  sins  and  go  to  Heaven,  or  have 
thy  sins  and  go  to  Hell  ?  "  Depressing  doubts,  though,  soon  followed 
this  conversion.  He  could  not  abandon  bell-ringing  and  other 
favorite  sports.  His  conversation  was  still  so  profane  that  an  old 
woman  of  Bedford  openly  reproved  him  "  as  the  ungodliest  fellow 
for  swearing  that  ever  she  heard  in  all  her  Life."  And  finally  the 
dream  on  the  hillside  showed  him  his  pitiable  condition  and  left 
him  with  "  a  vehement  hunger  and  desire  to  be  one  of  that  number 
that  did  sit  in  the  Sunshine."  Such  depression  has  always  been  a 
part  of  the  mystic's  progress.  But  the  final  step,  the  permanent 
peace  and  quiet  that  at  last  were  won,  is  but  scantily  represented 
in  Grace  Abounding,  though  at  the  end  the  penitent's  morbid  fears 
were  sloughed  off,  "Darkness  and  Atheism  fled  away,  and  the 
blessed  things  of  Heaven  were  set  within  my  view." 

In  Pilgrim's  Progress  the  same  story  is  told  with  less  morbid 
fear  and  with  heightened  imagination.  The  journey  for  poor 
Christian  from  the  City  of  Destruction  to  the  City  of  Zion  is  still 
long  and  wearisome.  The  difficulties  and  dangers  encountered  by 
the  wayfarer  are  frightful;  despair  torments  him.  Nevertheless, 
in  the  end  he  reaches  Beulah  land,  and,  beyond  the  river  Jordan, 
sees  the  shining  eternal  city. 

It  is  almost  impossible  elsewhere  in  the  literature  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  to  find  so  complete  a  record  of  the  mystic  way. 
The  poets  confined  themselves  to  one  or  more  single  themes,  or, 
writing  in  response  to  certain  moods,  made  no  attempt  to  trace 
their  spiritual  growth  continuously.  The  mysticism  of  these  poets, 
therefore,  can  best  be  studied  as  they  reflect  certain  common  moods. 
And  if  these  moods  are  more  or  less  prominent  in  all  religious 
feeling,  one  is  simply  reminded  again  that  mysticism  is  not 
altogether  distinct  from  other  forms  of  Christian  faith,  and  that 
many  of  its  fundamental  teachings  are  as  old  as  Philo  and  the 
Alexandrine  Platonists. 

Among  the  English  mystics  the  sense  that  "the  world  is  too 


/|.£         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

much  with  us  "  was  especially  strong.  John  Norris,  the  "  Eecluse 
of  Bemerton,"  lived  his  secluded  life,  as  Ferrar  did,  through  choice, 
and  rejoiced  in  "the  happy  change";  for 

ITho  my  fleeting  life  runs  swiftly  on, 
Twill  not  be  short,  because  'tis  all  my  own.** 

All  that  is  said  in  his  poetry  for  retirement  is  repeated  in  his  essay 
Of  Solitude,  a  piece  of  almost  Augustan  prose  that  ends  with  the 
thought :  "  I  find  I  must  take  refuge  at  my  Study  at  last,  and  there 
redeem  the  time  that  I  have  lost  among  the  Learned."  Vaughan 
had  the  same  love  for  seclusion.  He  gives  this  counsel  in  Retire- 
ment: 

If  then  thou  woulds't  unto  my  seat, 

Tis  not  th'  applause,  and  feat 
Of  dust,   and   clay 
Leads  to  that  way, 

But  from  those  follies  a  resolv'd  Retreat. 

Many  of  Traherne's  poems,  also,  some  of  which  have  been  already 
noticed,  recognize  the  need  for  solitude.  The  child  is  born  speech- 
less, he  says,  "that  he  might  in  himself  profoundly  busied  be." 
Later,  amid  the  distractions  of  life,  these  first  divinely  learned 
truths  are  forgotten.  But  man's  happiness,  as  all  mystics  would 
agree,  depends  on  his  return,  in  seclusion  from  the  world,  to  this 
state  of  childish  receptivity. 

Such  retirement  involves  also  abnegation.  Mystical  writers  had 
long  stressed  this  as  one  of  the  fundamental  virtues.  The  teachings 
of  Thomas  &  Kempis,  the  counsel  of  the  Theologia  Oermanica,  and 
the  wise  advice  of  St.  John  of  the  Cross  on  the  right  and  wrong 
use  of  the  pleasures  of  life,  were  taken  to  heart  by  the  poets.  Our 
earthly  desires,  St.  John  showed,  mean  privation  of  the  spirit  of 
God,  fatigue,  torture,  darkness,  and  weakness  of  soul.  "  When  our 
affections,"  he  said,  "free  from  the  influence  of  natural  goods, 
which  are  deceitful,  rest  upon  no  one,  the  soul  is  free  to  love  all 
men  reasonably  and  spiritually,  as  God  wills  them  to  be  loved." 
The  doctrine  was  taken  over  by  the  English  mystics.  It  is  stressed 
especially  in  the  last  two  books  of  More's  Psychozoia,  as  its  author 
had  learned  it  in  the  Theologia  Germanica.  Habington,  also, 
accepts  it,  in  passages  like  these : 

*''  Retirement. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  4? 

What  interest  doth  all  the  vaine 
Cunning  of  surfet  to  your  sencea  gaine; 

Since  it  obscure  the  spirit  must, 
And  bow  the  flesh  to  sleepe,  disease  or  lust? 
And  again, 

The  soule  which  doth  with  God  unite, 
IThose  gayities  how  doth  she  slight 

Which  ore  opinions  sway!  ** 

There  comes  into  English  verse,  then,  with  these  mystics  the 
note  of  calm  and  quiet.  The  bitter  arguments  of  the  theologians 
and  the  harsh  discords  of  civil  war  sound  very  remote,  or  are  not 
heard  at  all.  Instead  of  these  earthly  things,  Norris  says : 

A  nobler,  a  diviner  guest, 
Has  took  possession  of  my  breast; 
He  has,  and  must  engross  it  all, 
(And  yet  the  room  is  much  too  small. 

Vaughan  again  and  again  struck  the  same  note.    In  Retirement, 
for  example,  he  calls: 

Fresh  fields  and  woods;  the  Earth's  fair  face! 
God's  foot-stool!  and  mans  dwelling  place! 
I  ask  not  why  the  first  Believer 
Did  love  to  be  a  Country  liver, 
Who  to  secure  pious  content 
Did  pitch  by  groves  and  wells  his  tent; 
Where  he  might  view  the  boundless  skie, 
And  all  those  glorious  lights  on  high; 
With  flying  meteors,  mists,  and  show'rs, 
Subjected  hills,  trees,  meads,  and  floVra, 
And  ev'ry  minute  bless  the  King, 
And  wise  creatour  of  each  thing? 

Sure  in  their  belief  that  only  the  things  of  the  spirit  count,  the 
mystics  are  invariably  optimists.  A  temperament  that  feels  the 
richness  of  retirement  and  abnegation  and  religious  calm  is  natur- 
ally optimistic.  Mysticism  has  even  come  dangerously  near  to 
breaking  down  distinctions  between  right  and  wrong.  Meister 
Eckhart  had  taught  that  "  Evil,  from  the  highest  standpoint,  is 
only  a  means  for  realizing  the  eternal  aim  of  God  in  creation." 9* 
Evil,  therefore,  which  must  be  a  part  of  God's  plan,  ceases  to  be 

M  Et  Alta  a  Longe  Cognoscit,  Deus,  Deus  Meus,  and  Cupio  Dissolvi. 
98  W.  R.  Inge,  Light,  Life,  and  Love,  p.  xxix. 


48         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

evil»  Augustine  in  the  Confessions  took  this  view,  which  was 
repeated  again  and  again,  in  philosophy  and  in  literature.  Traherne 
in  one  of  the  Meditations  asserts  that  "  everything  in  its  place  is 
admirable,  deep,  and  glorious;  out  of  its  place  like  a  wandering 
bird,  is  desolate  and  good  for  nothing." 8e  The  poets  seldom 
followed  this  argument,  to  its  logical  conclusion.  Like  Vaughan, 
they  took  the  evil  with  the  good  and  felt  the  blessedness  of  life  even 
in  its  discipline.  Vaughan  means  no  more  than  this  in  his 
Affliction: 

Sickness  is  wholsome,  and  Crosses  are  but  curbs 

To  check  the  mule,  unruly  man; 
They  are  heaven's  husbandry,  the  famous  fan 

Purging  the  floor  which  Chaff  disturbs. 
(Were  all  the  year  one  constant  Sun-shine,  wee . 

Should  have  now  flowres/ 

All  would  be  drought  and  leanness;  not  a  tree 
Would  make  us  bowres. 

Traherne,  however,  had  more  of  Emerson's  blindness  to  the  stern 
realities  of  life;  to  him 

Even  trades  themselves  seen  in  celestial  light, 
And  cares  and  sins  and  woes  are  bright. 

And  the  lesson  that  the  purple  mountain  and  the  ancient  wood 
Spoke  to  the  New  England  philosopher  is  recognized  in  Traherne's 
poem,  The  Anticipation: 

Wants  are  the  fountains  of  Felicity; 

No  joy  could  ever  be 

Were  there  no  want.    No  bliss, 
No  sweetness  perfect  were  it  not  for  this. 

Want  is  the  greatest  pleasure 

Because  it  makes  all  treasure. 
O  what  a  wonderful  profound  abysa 
Is  God!    In  whom  eternal  wants  and  treasures 
Are  more  delightful,  since  they  both  are  pleasures.17 

In  this  attitude  Traherne  seems  to  be  either  utterly  unsympa- 
thetic or  blind  to  suffering.    But  when  he  declared, 

All  may  happy  be,  each  one  most  blest, 
Both  in  himself  and  others,98 


98  3.  55.    See  too  ReUgio  Medici,  L  16,  53. 
w  The  Vision  and  Anticipation. 
*  Ease,  p.  56. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  49 

he  means  that  spiritual  blessings  are  offered  to  all.  This  is  made 
plain  by  a  poem  called  The  Choice: 

Eternity  doth  give  the  richest  things 

To  every  man,  and  makes  all  Bangs. 
The  best  and  richest  things  it  floth  convey 

To  all  and  every  one, 
It  raised  me  unto  a  throne! 
Which  I  enjoy, 
In  such  a  way, 

That  truth  her  daughter  is  my  chiefest  bride, 
Her  daughter  truth's  my  chiefest  pride. 

In  this  sense,  "the  best  things  should  be  the  most  common,"  as 
Traherne  insists  they  are." 

Of  the  English  poets  who  thus  recommended  a  life  of  calm  and 
quiet  as  the  surest  means  of  knowing  God,  few  attained  what  is 
technically  called  the  state  of  contemplation.  Of  this  psychic 
condition  Eichard  of  St.  Victor  distinguished  three  types  or  grades : 
mentis  dilatio,  or  the  enhancement  of  normal  spiritual  vision; 
mentis  sublevatio,  in  which  the  vision  rises  above  all  human  power; 
and  mentis  alienatio,  when  self-consciousness  is  lost  in  ecstacy. 
Only  this  last  type  is  for  the  mystic  true  contemplation.100 
Ruysbrock  described  it  in  this  way :  "  From  the  splendour  of  the 
Father  a  direct  light  shines  on  those  spirits  in  which  the  thought 
is  naked  and  free  from  similitudes,  raised  above  the  senses,  above 
similitudes,  above  reason  and  without  reason,  in  the  lofty  purity 
of  the  spirit.101  To  this  may  be  added  the  idea  of  Jacob  Boehme: 
"  Son,  when  thou  canst  throw  thyself  into  That,  where  no  creature 
dwelleth,  though  it  be  but  for  a  moment,  tEen  thou  hearest  what 
God  speaketh,"  and  "  If  thou  canst,  my  son,  for  a  while  but  cease 
from  all  thy  thinking  and  willing,  then  thou  shalt  hear  the 
unspeakable  words  of  God."  In  such  a  state  "the  simple  eye  of 
the  soul  itself  remains  open — that  is  thought,  pure,  naked,  uniform, 
and  raised  above  the  understanding."  102  Such  is  "  the  negative 
road,"  as  mystics  call  it,  to  the  divine. 

For  this  extreme  sort  of  contemplation,  the  mentis  alienatw, 
English  poets  had  but  slight  regard.  Against  it  the  practical 

"Meditations,  3.  53.  ™Cell  of  Self  Knowledge. 

101 M.  Maeterlinck,  Ruysbroeck  and  the  Mystics,  p.  39. 
101  Of  the  Supersensual  Life,  Everyman  ed.,  p.  227,  and  Ludovic  Rosiue, 
quoted  from  R.  A.  Vaughan,  1,  p.  25. 


50       Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

English  temper  spoke  in  these  plain  words  of  Frances  Quarles: 
"Let  not  the  sweetness  of  Contemplation  be  so  esteem'd,  that 
Action  be  despis'd;  Rachel  was  more  faire,  Leah  more  fruitfull: 
As  contemplation  is  more  delightfull,  so  is  it  more  dangerous: 
Lot  was  upright  in  the  City,  and  wicked  in  the  Mountaine."  10S 
Nor  had  these  English  mystics  often  reached  this  state  of  contem- 
plation. Richard  Baxter,  who  certainly  led  the  active  life  that 
Quarles  enjoined,  might  recommend  contemplation  to  his  parish- 
ioners :  "  Get  thy  heart/'  he  urged,  "  as  clear  from  the  world  as 
thou  canst;  wholly  lay  by  the  thoughts  of  thy  business,  of  thy 
troubles,  of  thy  enjoyments,  and  of  everything  that  may  take  up 
any  room  in  thy  soul."  But  he  was  forced  to  make  this  admission, 
"alas,  how  little  know  I  of  that  whereof  I  am  about  to  speak," 
and  really  he  meant  to  recommend  no  such  extreme  contemplation 
as  the  true  mystic  craves.10* 

Besides  Traherne,  Henry  More  and  the  recluse  of  Bemerton  were 
possibly  the  only  poets  who  approached  closely  to  this  state  of  mind. 
"  The  soul,"  Norris  realized,  "  may  be  wound  up  to  a  most  strange 
degree  of  Abstraction  by  the  silent  and  steady  Contemplation  of 
God.  .  .  .  Some  of  the  severer  Platonists  have  been  of  Opinion, 
that  'tis  possible  for  a  Man  by  mere  intention  of  thought  not  only 
to  withdraw  the  Soul  from  all  commerce  with  the  Senses,  but  even 
really  to  separate  it  from  the  Body.  .  .  .  There  are  exceeding 
great  Measures  of  Abstraction  in  Contemplation,  so  great,  that 
sometimes  whether  a  Man  be  in  the  Body  or  out  of  the  Body,  he 
himself  can  hardly  tell.101  How  closely  Norris  reached  this  condi- 
tion himself,  or  whether  he  classed  himself  with  the  "severer 
Platonists,"  one  can  only  surmise.  It  may  be  that  The  Return  is 
based  on  a  personal  experience: 

Dear  Contemplation,  my  divinest  joy, 

When  I  thy  sacred  mount  ascend 
What  heavenly  sweets  my  soul  emjploy! 

Why  can't  I  there  my  days  for  ever  spend? 
When  I  have  conquer'd  thy  steep  heights  with  pain 
What  pity  'tis  that  I  must  down  again! 

But  at  the  end  the  poet  swings  back  to  the  more  practical  views  of 
Quarles  and  Baxter: 

*•  Enchyridion,  4.  12.  ""Saints'  Rest,  pt.  4.  6,  9;  1.  4,  1. 

106  An  Idea  of  Happiness.  In  A  Collection  of  Miscellanies,  ed.  1687,  pp. 
422-423.  See  too  Elevation. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  51 

No,  here  I  must  not  think  to  dwell, 
But  mind  the  duties  of  my  proper  sphere. 
So  angels,  tho  they  heaven's  glories  know, 
Forget  not  to  attend  their  charge  below. 

Jeremy  Taylor,  also,  expressed  the  same  conservative  point  of 
view.108  "  There  is  a  degree  of  meditation  so  exalted/'  he  admits, 
"  that  it  changes  the  very  name,  and  is  called  contemplation ;  and 
it  is  the  unitive  way  of  religion,  that  is,  it  consists  in  unions  and 
adherences  to  God/'  Taylor  feels,  however,  that  such  rapture  is 
often  due  to  a  psychopathic  condition,  and  "that  many  illusions 
have  come  in  the  likeness  of  visions,  and  absurd  fancies  under  the 
pretence  of  raptures."  Far  better,  he  feels,  it  is  to  "  entertain 
the  inward  man  ...  in  actions  of  repentence,  virtue,  and  precise 
duty."  But  few  true  mystics  would  accept  as  apt  the  analogy  that 
Taylor  uses :  "  It  is  more  healthful  and  nutritive  to  dig  the  earth, 
and  to  eat  of  her  fruits,  than  to  stare  upon  the  greatest  glories  of 
the  heavens :  So  unsatisfying  a  thing  is  rapture  and  transportation 
to  the  soul;  it  often  distracts  the  faculties,  but  seldom  does 
advantage  piety,  and  is  full  of  danger  in  the  greatest  of  its  lustre." 

The  preparative  of  the  mystic  for  contemplation,  it  has  been 
seen,  was  the  conscious  removal  of  the  mind  from  all  things 
temporal  and  spacial,  the  going  forth  of  the  soul  "beyond  the 
limits  of  nature  and  of  reason  "  to  ascent  on  the  "  divine  ladder 
of  faith."  The  condition  has  already  been  described.107  "  He  who 
penetrates  into  himself,  transcends  himself,  ascends  truly  to  God." 

Frances  Quarles,  who  would  be  hardly  able  to  lose  himself  in 
any  form  of  abstraction,  gives  this  precise  description  of  such 
"  noughting  of  self  " : 

When  thy  ambitious  knowledge  wold  attempt 

So  high  a  Taske  as  God,  she  must  exempt 

All  carnall  sense;  Thy  Reason  must  release 

Her  pow'r;  Thy  Fancy  must  be  bound  to  th'  peace; 

Thy  Spirits  must  be  rapt ;  They  must  exile 

Thy  flesh,  and  keepe  a  Sabbath  for  a  while; 

Thou  must  forget  thy  selfe,  and  take  strong  Bands 

Of  thy  owne  Thoughts,  and  shake  eternall  hands 

w  The  Life  of  our  Blessed  Lord,  Pt.  I,  sect.  5,  disc.  3.  "  Of  Meditation," 
pp.  116-121. 

m  See  also  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  The  Ascent  of  Mount  Carmel,  pp.  64,  74, 
and  Inge's  quotation  from  Albertus  Magnus,  Christian  Mysticism,  p.  145. 


52         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

With  thy  rebellious  Lusts ;  discard  and  cleare 
Thy  heart  of  all  Ideas."8 

To  this  conclusion  the  mystics  were  brought  by  their  sense  of  tha 
infiniteness  of  Deity.  In  that  mood  John  Norris,  for  example, 
opens  his  Divine  Hymn: 

No  power  can  justly  praise  Him  but  must  be 

As  great,  as  infinite  as  He; 
He  comprehends  His  boundless  Self  alone, 
Created  minds  too  shallow  are  and  dim, 

(His  works  to  fathom,  much  more  Him. 

Hence  the  one  way  to  God  seemed  to  be  the  complete  loss  of  sense 
and  reason. 

Another  religious  experience  that  is  described  again  and  again 
by  these  literary  mystics  is  the  sense  of  the  darkness  impeding 
human  sight  as  it  seeks  the  divine.  The  "  dark  night  of  the  soul " 
immediately  preceding  the  final  triumph  has  proved  the  most  tragic 
step  in  the  mystic's  quest.  Henry  Vaughan,  who  spoke  so  often 
of  radiant  light  and  whose  favorite  word  was  bright  or  white, 
said  finely 

There  is  in  God,  some  say 
A  deep,  but  dazzling  darkness.109 

Drummond,  likewise,  admitted  that  God  can  be  seen  only  as  the 
dark  mists  for  a  moment  break  away.  All  readers  of  poetry  axe 
familiar  with  Francis  Thompson's  splendid  vision: 

I  dimly  guess  what  Time  in  mists  confounds; 

Yet  ever  and  anon  a  trumpet  sounds 

From  the  hid  battlements  of  Eternity; 

These  shaken  mists  a  space  unsettle,  then 

Hound  the  half-glimpsed  turrets  slowly  wash  again. 

Long  before  the  modern  Catholic  poet  won  this  moment's  joy, 
Henry  Drummond  had  experienced  it; 

Beneath  a  sable  vaile,  and  Shadowes  deepe, 

Of  Vnacoessible  and  dimming  light, 

In  Silence  ebane  Clouds  more  blacke  than  Night, 

The  Worlds  great  King  his  secrets  hidde  doth  keepe : 

Through  those  Thicke  Mistes  when  any  Mortall  Wight 


108  On  QWT  Meditation  upon  God.    See  also  Enchyridion,  2.  30. 
"•  The  Night,  p.  523. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  53 

Aspires,  with  halting  pace,  and  Eyes  that  weepe, 

To  pore,  and  in  his  Misteries  to  creepe, 

With  Thunders  hee  and  Lightnings  Wastes  their  Sight.110 

But  the  poets  speak  more  often  of  the  direct  intuition  that  they 
have  had  of  divine  truth.  No  one  of  them  achieved  the  super- 
natural vision  described  vividly  by  Dante  in  the  closing  cantos  of 
the  Paradiso;  for  most  of  these  poets  saw  no  further  than  this 
material  world  and  our  human  nature  illumined  by  a  divine  light. 
Of  their  many  references  to  the  less  abnormal  glimpse  of  the  divine, 
only  two  can  be  given  here,  one  the  vision  of  a  Catholic  poet,  the 
other  of  a  Protestant. 

In  one  of  the  most  mystical  of  CrashaVs  poems,  In  the  Glorious 
Epiphanie  of  our  Lord  God,  the  three  kings  unite  in  their  song 
of  adoration.  Their  chief  argument  is  that  the  bright  sun  and  the 
old  pagan  idols  have  been  shorn  of  their  glory  by  the  coming  of 
Christ.  The  idea  is  worked  out  in  part  with  Crashaw's  customary 
fantasticality ; 

Neuer  more 

By  wanton  heyfer  shall  be  worn 
A  garland,  or  a  guilded  horn: 
The  altar-stall'd  ox,  fatt  Osyris  now 

(With  his  fair  sister  cow 

Shall  kick  the  clouds  no  more;  but  lean  and  tame, 
See  His  horn'd  face,  and  dy  for  shame: 
And  Mithra  now  shall  be  no  name. 

The  remainder  of  the  poem,  however,  is  more  truly  mystical.  The 
three  kings  look  forward  in  time  past  the  first  dimming  of  the 
sun,  at  the  Crucifixion,  to  the  second,  at  the  conversion  of  Saul. 
By  this  eclipse  Crashaw  says,  the  indirect,  or  "  oblique,"  source  of 
light  was  shut  off,  and  Saul,  "  the  right-eyM  Areopagite,"  was  able 
by  "vigorous  guess" — that  is  the  mystic's  intuition — to  "inuade 
and  catch  Thy  quick  reflex."  The  vision  came  with  "  swift  flash," 
and  Saul  was  transformed  to  Paul,  the  first  "  great  mystic  of  the 
mystic  day."  Thereafter,  he  taught  the  true  path  between  this 
world  and  the  other; 

O  prize  of  the  rich  Spirit!  with  what  feirce  chase 
Of  his  strong  soul,  shall  he 
Leap  at  thy  lofty  face, 


n°Jfons  Knowledge.    See  Giles  Fletcher's  vision  in  the  fourth  canto  of 
Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph. 


54        Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

And  seize  the  swift  flash,  in  rebound 
From  this  obsequious  cloud, 

Once  call'd  a  sun, 

Till  dearly  thus  undone; 
Till  thus  triumphantly  tam'd  (0  ye  two 
Twinne  sunnes  I )  and  taught  now  to  negotiate  you. 

The  kings  therefore  resolve 

To  make  braue  way 
Upwards,  and  presse  on  for  the  pure 
Intelligentiall  prey, 

or 

At  least  to  play 
The  amorous  spyes 
And  peep  and  proffer  at  Thy  sparkling  throne. 

If  one  of  Norris's  poems  were  to  be  placed  beside  this,  it  would 
doubtless  be  The  Elevation.  "  The  general  design  of  the  precedent 
poem,"  he  explains,  "  is  to  represent  the  gradual  ascent  of  the  soul 
by  contemplation  to  the  supreme  good,  together  with  its  firm 
adherency  to  it,  and  its  full  acquiescence  in  it.  ...  The  inclina- 
tions of  the  animal  nature  have  little  or  no  power  over  him,  who 
has  advanc'd  to  the  heights  of  habitual  contemplation."  The  last 
two  stanzas  of  the  poem  are : 

But  see,  to  what  new  region  am  I  come? 
I  know  it  well,  it  is  my  native  home. 

Here  led  I  once  a  life  divine, 

Which  did  all  good,  no  evil  know: 

Ah!  who  wou'd  such  sweet  bliss  resign 
[For  those  vain  shews  which  fools  admire  below? 
'Tis  true,  but  don't  of  folly  past  complain, 
But  joy  to  see  these  blest  abodes  again. 

JA  good  retrieve:  but  lo,  while  thus  I  speak, 
With  piercing  rays,  th'  eternal  day  does  break, 

The  beauties  of  the  face  divine, 

Strike  strongly  on  my  feeble  sight: 

With  what  bright  glories  does  it  shine! 
Tis  one  immense  and  ever-flowing  light. 
Stop  here  my  soul;  thou  canst  not  bear  more  bliss, 
Nor  can  thy  now  rais'd  palate  ever  relish  less. 

The  fervor  with  which  the  mystics  have  described  such  moments 
of  vision  is  proof  of  their  sincerity.  A  single  thought  is  enough 
to  kindle  their  imaginations ;  or,  as  Crashaw  felt, 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  55 

I  sing  the  name  which,  none  can  say 
But  touch'd  with  an  interior  ray.01 

But  moments  of  vision  like  these  were  not  usually  of  long  duration. 
At  the  opening  of  the  Paradiso  Dante  laments  that  human  memory 
cannot  retain,  nor  words  reproduce,  adequately  the  experience  he 
has  had.  Henry  Vaughan's  vision  proved  to  be  just  as  fleeting : 

But  this  near  done, 
That  little  light  I  had  was  gone.11* 

Or  one  may  read  the  same  confession  of  disappointment  from  John 
Norris : 

When  I  have  conquer'd  thy  steep  heights  with  pain 

What  pity  'tis  that  I  must  down  again.11* 

The  marked  difference,  however,  between  these  brief  moments  of 
vision  and  man's  normal  power  of  apprehension,  was  not  under- 
stood by  the  mystics  to  imply  that  the  spirifs  life  is  not  continuous 
and  unbroken.  Neither  birth  nor  death,  which  pertain  to  the 
physical  existence  only,  can  affect  it  at  all. 

A  belief  in  preexistence  was  therefore  natural  to  the  mystics. 
Henry  More  gathered  in  Prce-existency  the  chief  arguments  that 
Neo-Platonists  used  in  support  of  the  belief.  Drummond  and 
Norris,  and  indeed  most  of  the  poets  here  considered,  accept  the 
idea.  In  the  Elevation  Norris  calls  to  his  spirit : 

Take  wing — my  soul — and  upwards  bend  thy  flight, 
To  thy  originary  fields  of  light. 

There  he  anticipates  finding  nothing  strange: 

But  see,  to  what  new  region  am  I  come? 
I  know  it  well,  it  is  my  native  home. 

(Here  led  I  once  a  life  divine, 

Which  did  all  good,  no  evil  know. 

Of  these  seventeenth-century  poets,  Vaughan  and  Traherne  were 
fondest  of  the  idea.  Vaughan's  Retreate  may  have  given  to  Words- 
worth the  fundamental  idea  of  the  Ode: 

Happy  those  early  dayes!  when  I 
Shin'd  in  my  Angell-infancy. 
Before  I  understood  this  place 


m  To  the  Name — Jesus.  M  Vanity  of  Spirit. 

***  Contemplation. 

10 


56          Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

Appointed  for  my  second  race, 
Or  taught  my  soul  to  fancy  ought 
But  a  white,  Celestiall  thought, 
When  yet  I  had  not  walkt  above 
A  mile,  or  two,  from  my  first  love, 
And  looking  back  (at  that  short  space), 
Could  see  a  glimpse  of  his  bright-face 
When  on  some  gilded  cloud,  or  flowre 
My  gazing  soul  would  dwell  an  houre, 
And  in  those  weaker  glories  spy 
Some  shadows  of  eternity. 

Just  as  thoroughly  Wordsworthian,  though,  are  these  lines  from 
Man's  Fall: 

Besides  I've  lost 

A  traine  of  lights,  which  in  those  Sunshine  dayes 

Were  my  sure  guides, 

or  these  verses  from  Corruption: 

Sure,  It  was  so,  Man  in  those  early  days 

Was  not  all  stone,  and  Earth, 
(He  shin'd  a  little,  and  by  those  weak  Rays 

(Had  some  glimpse  of  his  birth. 

Holding  this  belief  Vaughan  and  especially  Traherne  saw  a 
sanctity  in  childhood.    Vaughan  asks  in  one  of  his  poems, 

Since  all  that  age  doth  teach,  is  ill, 
Why  should  I  not  love  childe-hood  still  tm 

To  this  thought  Traherne  returns  again  and  again.     Childhood 
seemed  to  him  full  of  such  happy  innocence  as  this : 

A  learned  and  a  happy  ignorance 

Divided  me 

From  all  the  sloth,  care,  pain,  and  sorrow 
that  advance 

The  madness  and  the  misery 
Of  men.    No  error,  no  distraction  I 
Saw  soil  the  earth  or  overcloud  the  sky. 

This  comes  about  because  God 

In  our  childhood  with  us  walks 

And  with  our  thoughts  mysteriously  he  talks. 


1U  Childe-hood,  p.  521. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  57 

And  like  the  later  poet  who  addressed  the  child  as  "thou  best 
Philosopher,"  "  thou  eye  among  the  blind/'  and  "  mighty  Prophet ! 
seer  blest  I "  Traherne  would  show  us 

That  Childhood  might  itself  alone  be  said 
My  tutor,  teacher,  guide  to  be, 
Instructed  then  even  by  the  Deity  ,"* 

The  same  understanding  of  childhood  is  conveyed  in  Traherne's 
fine  prose  Meditations.  "  Those  pure  and  virgin  apprehensions  I 
had  in  my  infancy/'  he  admits,  "  and  that  divine  light  wherewith 
I  was  born,  are  the  best  unto  this  day  wherein  I  can  see  the 
universe."  lie  Traherne's  prose  under  the  influence  of  a  strong 
emotion  becomes  more  harmonious  than  his  verse  in  the  two 
succeeding  meditations  that  begin,  "  All  appeared  new  and  strange 
at  first,  inexpressibly  rare  and  delightful,  and  beautiful,"  and  "  The 
corn  was  orient  and  immortal  wheat."  11T  Vaughan  also,  sensing 
the  wonderment  of  the  infant  in  its  new  surroundings,  says, 
"  Things  here  were  strange  unto  him."  But  neither  poet  could  do 
more  in  verse  than  Traherne  in  these  deeply  felt  meditations  to 
show  the  innocence  and  sacredness  of  Childhood. 

Between  birth  and  death,  the  other  termination  of  our  earthly 
life,  intervenes  our  mortal  existence.  Commonplace  enough  it 
seems  to  ordinary  men;  but,  in  the  eyes  of  the  mystic,  it,  too,  is  a 
marvel.  "We  are  that  bold  and  adventurous  piece  of  Nature," 
The  Religio  Medici  reminds  us ;  for  Sir  Thomas  Browne  conceived 
the  universe  as  a  "  a  Stair,  or  manifest  scale  of  creatures,  rising 
not  disorderly,  or  in  confusion,  but  with  a  comely  method  and 
proportion."  Things  like  plants  having  mere  existence,  creatures 
with  life  and  sense,  mankind  endowed  with  reasoning  faculties,  and 
the  unseen  spirits,  those  "  tutelary  and  Guardian  Angels,"  hovering 
about-  us — what  a  mystery  is  life !  And  in  this  world  man  lives  as 
an  "  amphibious  piece  between  a  corporal  and  spiritual  Essence, 
that  middle  form  that  links  these  two  together."  "The  whole 
creation  is  a  Mystery,"  the  author  concludes,  "and  particularly 
that  of  Man."  118 

Such  a  philosopher  can  hardly  regard  death  as  any  essential 
change  in  our  being,  though  he  quaintly  terms  it  "  the  mortal  and 

u*  Eden,  p.  8,  and  the  Approach,  pp.  31,  33. 

™  Meditations,  3.  1.  UTSee  above. 

"•  Religio  Medici,  1.  15,  34,  36. 


Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

right-lined  circle"  that  "must  conclude  and  shut  up  all."  To 
him  "man  is  a  noble  animal,  splendid  in  ashes  and  pompous  in 
the  grave."  119  So  the  mystics  in  general  have  handled  finely  the 
thought  of  death.  Sometimes  John  Norris  sinks  to  extreme  prosi- 
ness;  but  two  poems  on  this  theme  are  as  fine,  in  some  phrases  at 
least,  as  Prospice.  The  Meditation  contains  this  memorable 
passage : 

When  after  some  delays,  some  dying  strife, 

The  soul  stands  shivering  on  the  ridge  of  life; 

'With  what  a  dreadful  curiosity 

Does  she  launch  out  into  the  sea  of  vast  Eternity! 

With  equally  arresting  phrase  the  same  question  is  presented  in 
The  Prospect: 

What  a  strange  moment  will  that  be, 

My  soul,  how  full  of  curiosity, 

When  wing'd,  and  ready  for  thy  eternal  flight 

On  th'  utmost  edges  of  thy  tottering  clay, 

Hovering  and  wishing  longer  stay, 
Thou  shalt  advance,  and  have  Eternity  in  sight  1 
When  just  about  to  try  that  unknown  sea, 

What  a  strange  moment  will  that  be! 

And  as  a  last  illustration  none  better  could  be  found  than  John 
Donne's  vivid  metaphor : 

Death  is  but  a  Groome, 
Which  brings  a  Taper  to  the  outward  roome, 
Whence  <thou  spiest  first  a  little  glimmering  light, 
And  after  brings  it  nearer  to  thy  sight: 
For  such  approaches  doth  heaven  make  in  death.1** 

Two  pieces  of  prose  literature  handle  the  theme  of  death  finely, 
though  in  different  spirit.  One  of  them,  Drummond's  Cypresse 
Grove,  has  already  been  noticed.  The  other  is  Pilgrim's  Progress. 
At  the  end  of  his  journey  Christian  catches  a  distant  glimpse  of 
the  heavenly  city.  He  and  his  companions  cross  the  river  with 
difficulty  and  ascend  the  mountain  in  the  company  of  two  angels. 
"  You  are  going  now,  said  they,  to  the  Paradise  of  God,  wherein 
you  shall  see  the  Tree  of  Life,  and  eat  of  the  never-fading  fruits 
thereof:  and  when  you  come  there  you  shall  have  white  Robes 
given  you,  and  your  walk  and  talk  shall  be  every  day  with  the 

"•  Hydriotaphia,  ch.  5.  **  Second  Anniversary,  11.  85-89. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  59 

King,  even  all  the  days  of  Eternity."  Overcome  with  emotion, 
Bunyan  exclaims,  "  Oh !  by  what  tongue  or  pen  can  their  glorious 
joy  be  expressed?  "  Nevertheless,  despite  the  fervor  of  this  descrip- 
tion, the  author  is  not  altogether  a  mystic.  The  terrible  plight  of 
Ignorance  as  the  dream  ends,  and  the  morbid  fears  of  Christian 
himself  at  the  fording,  are  in  no  wise  consonant  with  the  hope  and 
the  brotherly  charity  of  the  mystic  faith. 

In  true  mysticism  neither  death  nor  birth  is  regarded  as  affecting 
any  profound  change  in  man's  spiritual  life.  Indeed,  the  mystic 
does  not  isolate  this  world  from  the  next.  Heaven  is  conceived 
not  as  a  place  remote  and  different  from  this  world,  but  as  a 
spiritual  state  or  condition.  This  old  opinion  was  held  by  the 
Cambridge  Platonists.  Benjamin  Whichcote,  for  example,  believed 
that  "  Heaven  is  first  a  Temper,  and  then  a  Place,"  and  that  "  it  is 
not  possible  for  a  man  to  be  made  happy,  by  putting  him  into  a 
happy  place,  unless  he  be  in  a  good  state/'  In  the  Discourses  of 
John  Smith  the  same  teaching  is  found.  "As  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  is  not  so  much  without  men  as  within, — so  the  tyranny  of 
the  Devil  and  Hell  is  not  so  much  in  some  external  things  as  in 
the  qualities  and  dispositions  of  men's  minds,"  and  "wherever 
there  is  beauty,  harmony,  goodness,  love,  ingenuity,  wisdom,  holi- 
ness, justice,  and  the  like, — there  is  God."  121 

Poets  like  Vaughan,  who  felt  the  presence  of  God  everywhere 
in  nature,  would  naturally  accept  .all  this  as  true.  The  thought, 
however,  was  never  expressed  more  finely  than  by  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  in  the  Religio  Medici: 

Now,  the  necessary  Mansions  of  our  restored  selves  are  those  two  contrary 
and  incompatible  places  we  call  Heaven  and  Hell.  ...  St.  John's  descrip- 
tion by  Emerals,  Chrysolites,  and  precious  Stones,  is  too  weak  to  express 
the  material  Heaven  we  behold.  Briefly,  therefore,  where  the  soul  hath  the 
full  measure  and  complement  of  happiness;  where  the  boundless  appetite 
of  that  spirit  remains  compleatly  satisfied,  that  it  can  neither  desire 
addition  nor  alteration;  that,  I  think,  is  truly  Heaven.  .  .  .  Wherever  God 
will  tnus  manifest  himself,  there  is  Heaven,  though  within  the  circle  of 
this  sensible  world.1*1 

English  literary  mystics  have  seen  nothing  abnormal  in  their 
attitude  toward  life.  In  fact,  the  norm  would  seem  to  them  to 
be  just  this: 

111  E.  T.  Campagnac,  p.  xxxi,  and  J.  Tulloch,  2,  p.  188. 
118  Pt.  i,  sect.  49. 


60         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

Methinks  I  see  a  ray, 

A  glorious  beam  break  through  Heav'ns  canopy; 
Me  thinks  I  hear  a  voice,  Come  Soul,  and  see, 
Come;  here,  here  lies  thy  rest;  rest  in  my  Word,  &  Me.111 

But  although  they  have  possessed  only  natural  human  faculties, 
the  mystics  have  developed  some  of  them  at  the  expense  of  others. 
One  writer  on  the  subject  detects  in  the  mystic  temperament  these 
marked  trails;  a  strong  subjectivity;  a  full  development  of  the 
sub-conscious  faculties;  and  a  sensitiveness  to  environment.12* 
Only  by  Catholic  writers  has  the  mystic's  vision  been  regarded  as 
at  all  supernatural,  a  special  gift  to  the  chosen  few.125 

English  mysticism,  therefore,  has  been  notably  sane  and  reason- 
able. This  statement,  however,  should  not  be  taken  to  imply  that 
mysticism  in  general  has  been  marked  for  its  vagaries  in  thought 
or  conduct.  The  great  mystics  the  world  over  have  been  practical, 
helpful  men  and  women.  Nowhere  could  be  found  more  sound 
teaching  than  this  of  Master  Eckhart :  "  Some  people  pride  them- 
selves on  their  detachment  from  mankind,  and  are  glad  to  be  alone 
or  in  church;  and  therein  lies  their  peace.  But  he  who  is  truly 
in  the  right  state,  is  so  in  all  circumstances,  and  among  all 
persons."  128  With  the  same  concern  for  actual,  everyday  duties, 
Kuysbrock  stressed  such  virtues  as  obedience,  patience,  gentleness, 
kindness,  and  self-sacrifice.  So  also  Juan  de  Valdes  wrote :  "  Day 
by  day  I  acquire  a  stronger  conviction  that  the  Christian  should 
be  concerned  about  experience,  and  not  about  theoretical  knowl- 
edge. .  .  .  His  business  is  not  learned  by  speculation,  but  by 
experience."  127  Again,  to  the  early  Platonist  Pico  della  Mirandola 
is  attributed  the  statement :  "  Love  God  we  rather  may,  than  either 
know  Him,  or  by  speech  utter  Him."  Everywhere  among  the 
greater  English  mystics,  from  Walter  Hilton's  time  to  our  own, 
one  finds  this  concern  for  conduct  and  the  ordinary  duties  of  life. 

There  would  be  no  reason  to  deny  that  numerous  sects  in  Puritan 
England  were  guilty  of  all  kinds  of  extravagances.  Even  some  of 
the  extreme  mystics  who  can  hardly  be  classed  with  these  sectaries, 
as  they  were  called,  laid  great  stress  on  miraculous  revelations  by 

mPhineas  Fletcher,  Religious  Musings.    Paraphrase — upon  Ecclesiastes. 

U*C.  H.  Hamilton,  Psychological  Interpretation  of  Mysticism, 

"•See  Sharpe,  Mysticism:  Its  true  Nature  and  Value. 

*"  Inge,  Light,  Life  and  Love,  p.  12. 

***  Divine  Considerations,  no.  57,  Translated  by  Ferrar. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  6l 

vision,  spiritual  voices,  and  the  like.  The  voices  that  directed 
Bunyan  and  Cromwell  need  scarcely  be  mentioned  here.  Sir  Simon 
d'Ewes  recounts  in  his  autobiography,  as  Bunyan  does  in  Grace 
Abounding,  the  several  occasions  where  his  life  was  spared  by 
divine  intervention.  George  Fox  tells  in  his  Journal  of  the 
guidance  he  received  from  heavenly  voices  and  visions.  Baxter  in 
his  Remains  cites  similar  instances  of  God's  watchful  care  over 
him;  for  "the  marvelous  Preservation  of  Souldiers  by  Bibles  in 
their  Pockets  which  have  received  the  Bullets,  and  such  like  I  will 
not  mention."  128  Lastly,  Lord  Herbert  tells  us  in  his  Autobiography 
how  he  hesitated  to  publish  his  treatise  De  Veritate,  though  Hugo 
Grotius  urged  it,  till,  in  response  to  a  prayer,  "  a  loud  though  yet 
gentle  noise  came  from  the  heavens,"  which  he  took  as  a  sign  that 
he  should  print  his  book. 

But  of  such  miraculous  agencies  English  men  of  letters  have 
little  to  say.  Their  mysticism  sprang  purely  from  deep  spirituality. 
Impelled  by  that  alone,  Nicholas  Ferrar  left  his  responsible  position 
in  the  Virginia  Company  to  found  the  religious  community  at 
Little  Gidding.  There  he  lived  in  peaceful  retirement,  -seeking 
God  in  the  daily  routine  of  study  and  worship,  and  educating 
others  to  find  God  in  the  same  way.  Many  other  men  and  women 
of  the  seventeenth  century  lived  equally  spiritual  lives. 

Deep  spirituality,  therefore,  fills  the  literature  of  the  century. 
Some  of  the  mystical  writers  were  philosophers  and  theologians, 
like  John  Norris  and  the  Cambridge  Platonists.  Some  were  quiet, 
meditative  men  like  Drummond.  There  were  scientists,  also,  like 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and  other  busy  men  of  the  world,  though  we 
may  think  of  them,  as  we  think  of  Vaughan,  as  simply  God-inspired 
poets.  Some  gave  their  lives  wholly  to  religion,  as  Traherne  did 
and  Ferrar,  while  others  lived  close  to  the  rapidly  moving  current 
of  life.  Was  not  Plotinus  right,  therefore,  when  he  wrote  to 
Flaccus :  "  There  are  different  roads  by  which  this  end  (the  appre- 
hension of  the  Infinite)  may  be  reached.  The  love  of  beauty,  .which 
exalts  the  poet ;  that  devotion  to  the  One  and  that  ascent  of  science 
which  makes  the  ambition  of  the  philosopher;  and  that  love  and 
those  prayers  by  which  some  devout  and  ardent  soul  tends  in  its 
moral  purity  towards  perfection.  These  are  the  great  highways 
conducting  to  that  height  above  the  actual  and  particular,  where 

1W  Reliquia,  p.  46. 


62         Mysticism  in  Seventeenth-Century  English  Literature 

we  stand  in  the  immediate  presence  of  the  Infinite,  who  shines  out 
as  from  the  deeps  of  the  soul." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  trace  the  influence  of  these  seventeenth- 
century  writers  on  the  poets  who  succeeded  them.  Donne  was 
proclaimed  at  once  "  the  great  lord  of  wit " ;  but  his  power  rested 
on  the  least  mystical  elements  of  his  verse — his  restless,  daring 
intelligence,  the  spell  of  his  strange  fancies,  his  rugged,  tortuous 
expression.  Traherne,  on  the  contrary,  remained  absolutely  unknown 
until  almost  the  close  of  the  last  century.  A  copy  of  Henry 
Vaughan's  poems  was  among  the  books  disposed  of  when  Words- 
worth's library  was  sold.  Coleridge,  himself  the  most  subtle  metrist 
of  his  day,  praised  the  versification  of  Crashaw  highly.  And  one 
might  feel  that  not  only  he  and  Pope,  but  Coventry  Patmore,  later, 
and  Francis  Thompson  learned  much  from  the  Catholic  mystic. 
Indeed,  a  great  deal  that  seems  distinctive  in  the  poets  of  the 
Romantic  Movement,  much,  for  example,  of  Wordsworth's  supposed 
indebtedness  to  Eousseau,  comes  to  seem  rather  a  part  of  the 
common  spiritual  inheritance  of  the  English  people  from  the  earlier 
period.  The  romantic  poets  simply  caught  up  again  certain  threads 
of  thought  and  feeling  that  had  been  dropped  in  the  weave 
of  Augustan  literature.  The  love  for  nature,  the  respect  for  man 
as  man,  the  appreciation  of  childhood,  and  subjectivity  were  no 
new  elements  in  English  thought. 

What,  then,  can  mysticism  be,  if  it  has  been  furthered  by  men 
of  such  markedly  different  temperaments  and  if  its  influence  has 
been  so  universal?  Possibly  no  definition  can  be  framed  that  will 
seem  both  precise  and  sufficiently  inclusive;  for  mysticism,  as  a 
movement,  in  allowing  the  freest  expression  of  personality,  has 
sacrificed  centripetal  force.  It  may  be  sufficient  to  say,  in  conclu- 
sion, that  the  word  designates  a  certain  attitude  toward  self,  the 
outer  world  of  experience,  and  the  unseen  world  of  spirit.  Three 
illustrations  may  help  to  explain  this.  Of  himself,  the  great 
subjective  poet,  Thomas  Traherne,  cried: 

Thou  which  within  me  art,  yet  me!  Thou  eye, 
And  temple  of  His  whole  infinity ! 
0  what  a  world  art  Thou!  "• 

Of  the  relation  of  this  spiritual  force,  self,  toward  the  material 
world    Sir    Thomas    Browne,    near    the    close    of    Hydriotaphia, 

m  My  Spirit. 


Elbert  N.  8.  Thompson  63 

expressed  the  mystics's  point  of  view.  "  Pious  spirits,"  he  wrote^ 
"who  have  passed  their  days  in  raptures  of  futurity,  made  little 
more  of  this  world,  than  the  world  that  was  before  it,  while  they 
lay  obscure  in  the  chaos  of  preordination,  and  night  of  their  fore- 
beings  ....  They  have  already  had  an  handsome  anticipation 
of  heaven;  the  glory  of  the  world  is  surely  over,  and  the  earth  in 
ashes  unto  them."  This  anticipation  of  Heaven  that  Browne  spoke 
of  was  enjoyed  by  Henry  Vaughan,  and  the  highest  expression  of 
the  English  mystic's  vision  is  to  be  found  in  his  two  fine  poems : 

I  saw  Eternity  the  other  night 
Like  a  great  Ring  of  pure  and  endless  light, 
All  calm,  as  it  was  bright, 

and 

They  are  all  gone  into  the  world  of  light ! 

And  I  alone  sit  lingering  here; 
Their  very  memory  is  fair  and  bright, 

And  my  sad  thoughts  doth  clear. 

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